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idham mohammed hanash

divine oneness as the principle of beauty is perhaps quintessentially Islamicartistic expression and experience and what it celebrates. Why has Islamic artevolved as it has, what forms does it take, what is the logic underlying it? Whatmessage is the Muslim artist attempting to convey, what emotion is he seekingto evoke? This work views Islamic art as a subject of archeological study andtreats its evolution as part of the historical study of art in the broader sense. Atthe same time, it paves the way for an epistemological shift from viewingIslamic art as a material concept having to do with beautiful rarities and relicsthat have grown out of Islamic cultural and artistic creativity, to a theoreticalconcept associatedwith a vision, a principle, a theory and a method. This theo-retical concept provides the intellectual and cultural foundation for a criticalphilosophical science of Islamic artistic beauty to which we might refer as ‘thescience of Islamic art,’ or ‘the Islamic aesthetic’ that evaluates visual artistic creations in terms of both beauty and practical usefulness. In the process thestudy also explores orientalist misconceptions, challenging someof the premiseswith which it has approached Islamic art, with judgement rooted in a culturalframework alien to the spiritual perspective of Islam.

Professor Idham Mohammed Hanash has a PhD (1999) from the Institute of History andScientific Arabic Heritage of Higher Studies, and is currently an instructor in Islamic arts, andhead of the Academic Department of the College of Islamic Arts and Architecture at theInternational Islamic Sciences University in Jordan. He is interested in Arabic calligraphy and itsartistic and critical issues, and has authored more than 10books andmany studies in this field.

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THE THEORY OF ISLAMIC ARTAesthetic Concept and Epistemic Structure

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THE THEORY OF


Translated from the Arabic by

Nancy Roberts

ISLAMIC ART

Aesthetic Concept and Epistemic Structure

the international institute of islamic thought •

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1438ah/2017ce

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This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevantcollective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without thewritten permission of the publisher.

isbn 978-1-56564-696-4

The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the author and not necessarilythose of the publisher. The publisher is not responsible for the accuracy of URLs for exter-nal or third-party internet websites, if cited, and does not guarantee that any content onsuch websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Foreword vii

Introduction to the Concept and Theory of Islamic Art 1

1The Linguistic Structure of the Theory of Islamic Art 9

2Unity and Diversity in the Theory of Islamic Art 25

3Divine Oneness as the Principle of Beauty: Isma¢il R. al Faruqi’s Theory of Islamic Art 42

4The Communicative Aspect of Islamic Art: Theory and Application 56

Conclusion: Grounding the Theory of Islamic Art: Vision and Method 78

Content

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idham mohammed hanash’s The Theory of Islamic Art isan extensive and meticulous exposition of a very specific form ofhuman artistic expression, Islamic art. This is artistic composition lessconcerned with the simplistic realisation of beauty in physical form,and far more the powerful projection of an utterance, that of an innerbelief in God and man’s relationship to the Divine.

Thus, its practitioners sought to reflect the Divine unity and Truth,attempting to inform as well as remind humanity of the magnitude ofthe spiritual message and the beauty of religious experience, embuingtheir works in the process with a spiritual purpose directly engagingvision and mind to contemplate the Infinite, whilst the hand of theartist recedes humbly into the background. To understand this is totruly understand the language of this unique art form and what Islamicart signifies.

Divine Oneness as the principle of beauty is perhaps quintessentiallyIslamic artistic expression and experience and what it celebrates. Whyhas Islamic art evolved as it has, what forms does it take, what is thelogic underlying it? What message is the Muslim artist attempting toconvey, what emotion is he seeking to evoke? This work views Islamicart as a subject of archeological study and treats its evolution as part ofthe historical study of art in the broader sense. At the same time, itpaves the way for an epistemological shift from viewing Islamic art as amaterial concept having to do with beautiful rarities and relics thathave grown out of Islamic cultural and artistic creativity, to a theoreti-cal concept associated with a principle, a vision, a theory and a method.This theoretical concept provides the intellectual and cultural founda-tion for a critical philosophical science of Islamic artistic beauty towhich we might refer as ‘the science of Islamic art,’ or ‘the Islamic aesthetic’ that evaluates visual artistic creations in terms of both beautyand practical usefulness.

Foreword

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In the process the study also explores orientalist misconceptions,challenging some of the premises with which it has approached Islamicart, with judgement rooted in a cultural framework alien to the spiritualperspective of Islam.

The IIIT has undertaken in recent years to produce abridged versions of its key publications, and this translation is taken from theabridged Arabic edition Na·ariyyah al-Fan al-Isl¥mÏ: Al-Mafh‰m al-Jam¥lÏ wa al-Bunyah al-Ma¢rifiyyah.

We live in an age in which time is at a premium in virtually allspheres of life, including those of writing and production. Copiousintellectual, cultural and informational output continues unabated aspart of efforts to keep pace with changes in the public and privatespheres alike, while publishing houses and websites vie to provide people with the latest, and most up-to-date information in the easiest,most effective manner. The knowledge economy that now dominatesthe world requires a process of ‘creative adaptation’ of information asone of the building blocks of the world community at large, hence theIIIT’s series of abridged works. The aim is to help readers benefit fromavailable information as easily, effectively, and efficiently as possibleand to further develop their critical faculties so they become better ableto contribute to the development of humanity.

The abridged texts have been written in a clear, easy to read style,and while the essential contents of the original works have been pre-served, readers will note that, in the interests of space, the abridgededitions contain far fewer endnotes than do the original works. Theonly notes retained are those needed for clarification or the properestablishment of an idea, since the principle aim of this endeavor is tofacilitate rapid absorption of the content being conveyed. Readers whowish to go more deeply into the topics of concern or to find full docu-mentation of quotes may refer to the original works, which contain allnecessary citations.

The work is being published to widen discourse, and increase aware-ness of the question of Islamic artistic expression and its ultimate aimsand objectives. No doubt the subject is a specialized one, but it is hopedthat for the most part both general and specialist readers alike will benefit from the perspective offered and the overall issues examined.

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Where dates are cited according to the Islamic calendar (hijrah)they are labelled ah. Otherwise they follow the Gregorian calendarand labelled cewhere necessary. Arabic words are italicized except forthose which have entered common usage. Diacritical marks have beenadded only to those Arabic names not considered modern. Englishtranslations taken from Arabic references are those of the translator.

Since its establishment in 1981, the IIIT has served as a major centerto facilitate serious scholarly efforts. Towards this end it has, over thedecades, conducted numerous programs of research, seminars andconferences as well as publishing scholarly works specialising in thesocial sciences and areas of theology which to date number more thanfour hundred titles in English and Arabic, many of which have beentranslated into other major languages.

We would like to thank the author, translator, as well as editorialand production team at the IIIT London Office, and all those who weredirectly or indirectly involved in the completion of this book. May Godreward them for all their efforts.

january, 2017

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Introduction to theConcept and Theory of Islamic Art

there are three principle trends among modern scholarswith regard to the definition of Islamic art. The first trend is to view artwith a wide lens that encompasses all forms of creativity, including thelinguistic, the artistic, and others. This trend places knowledge, literature and art within the same broad category. The second way ofconceptualizing Islamic art, which is somewhat narrower than thefirst, encompasses everything that bears a direct relation to feeling,sensation, and aesthetic experience, including music, rhythm, architec-ture, drawing and painting. As for the third trend, which is the mostwidespread among art historians and contemporary critics, it narrowsthe definition of Islamic art to include only visual expressions ofIslamic creativity in the areas of architecture, writing, and relevantapplied arts, as well as creative harmonizations of the aesthetic and thefunctional in, for example, architectural structures, books, manu-scripts, tools, furnishings, and various other practical items.

This concept of Islamic art forms the epistemological nucleus of thestudy of buildings, paintings, rarities, manuscripts, and other materialobjects produced over time within the context of Islamic civilizationand capable of being described, categorized and displayed as works ofart that bear the marks of Islamic identity and culture.

The aforementioned aesthetic concept of Islamic art differs fromwhat we might term the archeological concept of this art in terms ofvision, method, and the nature of the knowledge on which it focuses.An archeologist views Islamic architectural structures, manuscriptsand other productions merely as intriguing antiquities whose culturaland historical origins are worthy of study. Seen from this perspective,the most suitable location for Islamic artistic artifacts is a museum. The

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theoretical study of Islamic art emerged, in fact, in response to archeol-ogists’ need for accurate scientific information on Islamic artisticremains from a material, industrial, historical, sociological, economicand cultural perspective.

The present study views Islamic art as a subject of archeologicalstudy and treats its evolution as part of the historical study of art in thebroader sense. At the same time, it paves the way for an epistemologi-cal shift from viewing Islamic art as a material concept having to dowith beautiful rarities and relics that have grown out of Islamic culturaland artistic creativity, to a theoretical concept associated with a vision,a principle, a theory and a method. This theoretical concept providesthe intellectual and cultural foundation for a critical philosophical science of Islamic artistic beauty to which we might refer as ‘the scienceof Islamic art,’ or ‘the Islamic aesthetic’ that evaluates visual artistic creations in terms of both beauty and practical usefulness.

One of the most notable benefits of this epistemological shift is thatthe study of Islamic art has come to rest on a philosophical perspectivethat has generated principles, theories, and critical methodologies thatserve as the foundations for the various genres, forms, styles andschools of Islamic artistic production.

This philosophical perspective has given rise to numerous specificand general theories of Islamic art. These varied and interrelated theo-ries of Islamic art incorporate elements from diverse fields of academicstudy and research relating to social and cultural studies as well as, tosome degree, the pure and applied sciences.

More than one theory has been put forward to explain the variousaspects of the Islamic artistic phenomenon and their intimate connec-tions with individuals, society, history, culture, or the receptiveaudience. Each topic of study is associated with specific aims, and forthe achievement of these aims, appropriate tools need to be devised.Hence, for example, the tools required to study the link betweenIslamic art and the prevailing customs and traditions of its producers’society (the culture of Islamic art) will differ from the tools required tostudy the link between Islamic art as a social activity and the overallsocial system that governs this art’s aesthetic and functional aspects(the sociology of Islamic art). Similarly, these two types of study will


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differ from the study of the link between Islamic art and its inwardimpact on both artist and recipient (the psychology of Islamic art).

Thus, these topics of study, and possibly others as well, are inti-mately and organically linked within what we might term ‘the theoryof Islamic art.’ A theory of Islamic art functions essentially to constructintellectual frameworks, epistemological categories, methodologies,stylistic formulations, and practical and theoretical approaches toIslamic works of art and to the social, cultural, religious and philo-sophical phenomenon they represent.

Can there be Art Without Theory?

My primary aim in writing this book is to examine the epistemologicaland methodological boundaries that separate archaeological, histori-cal and documentary studies of Islamic art and architecture on onehand, and philosophical, aesthetic, critical studies of these phenomenaon the other.

Archaeological, historical and documentary studies of Islamic artand artefacts are important for their ability to demonstrate the culturalvalue of works of Islamic art and artefacts based on the time periods towhich they have been dated; however, such studies devote little if anyattention to such works’ aesthetic and artistic value. In fact, historicalstudies of Islamic art have been detrimental to the development ofIslamic art theory by promoting the notion, common among modernstudents of Islamic art, that such art is nothing but a historical phenom-enon whose effects have come down to us in the modern age “withoutan accompanying philosophy or the biographies of those who pro-duced it, and without explanation of its techniques or styles.”

The statement just quoted mistakenly suggests that the works ofIslamic art and architecture that have been bequeathed to us lack anunderlying philosophical, aesthetic and artistic theory. If such a state-ment is taken at face value, it could well lead to another mistakenbelief, namely, that no Islamic philosophical, aesthetic and artistic theory existed to begin with. In fact, some modern scholars of Islamicart have argued for this supposed absence of a theory of Islamic art bygoing so far as to say that “Islamic Arab civilization felt no need to

The Theory of Islamic Art

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produce a theoretical, methodological discourse around beauty onwhich we might draw in discussing the aesthetic foundations of Islamicart.”

The Theory and Study of Islamic Art

This extended digression into matters epistemological and method-ological may make it possible to study the theory of Islamic art as asingle, comprehensive theme via three interrelated and somewhatoverlapping, approaches:

First: An attempt to establish a framework for this theory based onthe simplest possible procedural definition of the term ‘theory’.Defined thus, a theory is an idea, perspective or vision ordered arounda set of concepts and relationships that provide a thematically organ-ised explanation of the structural, descriptive and functional aspects ofa given phenomenon.

Generally speaking, a theory is one of the necessary foundations,defining principles, and logical procedures of a scientific discipline.More specifically, a theory represents the abstract aspect of a disci-pline. In the case of Islamic art, theory deals with the impact of humanknowledge and its creative aspects on the artistic phenomenon. Assuch, what is termed ‘artistic theory’ provides the knowledge-basedsubstance of aesthetics.

Given the foregoing, the expression ‘theory of Islamic art’ may besaid to refer to the interrelated and evolving ideas, concepts, opinions,perspectives and interpretations related to the structural, descriptiveand functional nature of the Islamic artistic phenomenon. The theoryof Islamic art was developed by aestheticists and early Muslim philoso-phers of art, and revisited by later scholars within the context of theacademic study and analysis of this phenomenon and its roots.

Second: General academic research into the components and defining features of this theory in light of the Islamic intellectual, epis-temological and cultural heritage, that is, based on ideas, opinions,perspectives and interpretations found in Arabic Islamic writings, or inresponse to questions about the critical link between tradition andmodernity. Such questions relate, for example, to:


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• the general Islamic concept of art• the definition of Islamic art• the system of Islamic arts viewed in terms of both how they

relate to knowledge overall, and their specific categorization as sources of knowledge

• the aesthetic and practical values of Islamic art• the comprehensive defining features of Islamic art, including

the dialectic between unity and diversity as the epistemologicalcore of any artistic theory.

Third: The critical study of art theory as it applies specifically toIslamic art, which branches off epistemologically and methodologicallyfrom more general research efforts.

What we are referring to here is the epistemological theory of theIslamic arts, including Islamic architecture or Arabic calligraphy, forexample, the historical origins and sources of Islamic art, the sociologyof Islamic art, the Islamic position on pictorial representation, onnature and matter and their relationship to Islamic art, or other topicsof relevance to Islamic art that might be studied from an academic-aesthetic perspective.

The Emergence and Development of the Study of Islamic Art

The theory of Islamic art in both its general and specific forms needs tobe studied, analysed and critiqued, and its origins identified. More-over, a clear cultural framework needs to be established for all areas ofrelevance to Islamic art, including the linguistic sciences, semantics, thestudy of symbolism and values, sociology, and communication, as wellas the discipline that, in relation to the epistemological structure of thisart, we might term the science of the elements of Islamic art.

In a break with the past, we now study the theory of Islamic art byfocusing on the aesthetic knowledge of relevance to this art rather thanon the merely factual knowledge that one gleans from dividing historyinto political periods as was done in traditional studies of Islamic art,which dated this or that work of art back to a given period, and then

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drew conclusions about said art based on this dating process and whatwas known about the period in question.

The first academic use of the term ‘Islamic art’ goes back to the earlynineteenth century ce/third century ah. As for the study of Islamic art, itcan be divided into the following three developmental phases:

First: The first of these three phases witnessed the discovery ofworks of art from various earlier periods. This was followed byattempts to identify the roles these works of art played both culturallyand functionally. Islamic artefacts were studied by Orientalists from avariety of cultural backgrounds who approached their research withvarying methodologies and brought a variety of aspirations to theirwork.

Second: During the second phase, academic studies progressed inrevealing the distinctive nature of Islamic art and the knowledge it hadto offer. This period witnessed research efforts on the part of a numberof Orientalists who settled in Muslim lands to study Islamic art. Anumber of Arab and Muslim researchers studied in their own coun-tries, such as Egypt, for example, under these Orientalists, or were senton academic missions to study Islamic art in Western museums andacademic institutions.

This second stage might be viewed as the foundational phase for thefledgling science of Islamic art. However, the discipline was colouredat this stage by Orientalists’ notions, opinions, conceptualizations andanalyses, which were frequently biased against the recognition ofIslamic art’s authenticity and richness as a source of new knowledge.

Third: The third phase might be described as that of post-Orientalistacademic activity. As such, it served as a corrective to inaccurateOrientalist conceptualizations which exerted a negative impact on themanner in which Islamic works of art were being approached. Thiscorrective took the form of an epistemological and methodologicalshift away from the historically based approach – which tended to bebiased in favour of Sassanid, Byzantine, Coptic, Ethiopian and otherart forms at the expense of the Islamic – to a more subjective approachthat entailed philosophical and aesthetic treatments of the phenome-non of Islamic art.


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During this third phase, which is still ongoing, most of the ideas,opinions, conceptualizations and analyses that emerged from what wemight term ‘Orientalist aesthetics’ have undergone serious re-exami-nation. This re-examination has involved analyses of basic themes andissues raised by Islamic art, such as the concept of Islamic art and itsepistemological boundaries; the origin of Islamic art and its subjectiveand objective sources; the religious, political, epistemological andfunctional values associated with Islamic art, and questions related tothe cultural and aesthetic features of Islamic art, which can serve as theepistemological basis and semantic focus for the theory of Islamic arton both the general and specific levels.


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The Linguistic Structure of

the Theory of Islamic Art

Introduction

arab-islamic culture appears not to have settled yet on acomprehensive, fixed, unambiguous definition of the term ‘art.’ Thisfact has hindered the development of an appropriate art-related termi-nology that can promote the expansion of knowledge in this field. Thedifficulty involved in formulating such a definition may be due prima-rily to the plethora of concepts associated with the Arabic term for ‘art’(fann) and its complex cultural connotations.

This uncertainty over the definition of ‘art’ has had certain negativeeffects on the linguistic structure of the theory of Islamic art as an epis-temological field comprising a set of interrelated terms, concepts, andtopics. Some of the difficulty can be traced to the coining and use ofterms by Orientalist scholars engaged in the study of Islamic architec-ture, crafts and archaeological findings. These newly coined terms,coloured as they were by Western ideas and concepts relating to Islamicart, came to form the epistemological substratum for the language ofacademic research in the various areas of Islamic art.

Islamic artistic theory is expressed at times in the form of metaphor-ical language based on interpretative readings of Islamic works of art,which may be perceived as visual signs, cultural symbols, and loftyepistemological discourse that goes beyond mere artistic form toreflect deeper meanings, connotations and values. The phrase “the language of Islamic art” thus refers to a set of concepts and technicalterms that embody the semantic focal points for this art’s major themes,and which serve as key words for academic research into its variousepistemological realms.

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The language of Islamic art is thus an epistemological language parexcellence which is based on what we might term ‘Islamic artistic terminology.’ The phrase ‘Islamic artistic terminology’ is to be distin-guished from the term ‘Islamic art.’ The term ‘Islamic art’ refers to theentire artistic subject matter, whereas the term ‘artistic terminology’ isa conceptual element based on the intimate link between the Arabiclanguage and Islamic art.

Arabic is Islamic art’s mother tongue, the language that contains allwords, technical terms and concepts expressive of the philosophical,aesthetic and creative themes of relevance to Islamic art. As such,Arabic exerts a tremendous influence over Islamic art by ordering therhythmic variables of shape and by perfecting its ornamental elements,be they plants or geometrical shapes, as well as the images of Arabiccalligraphy displaying words from the Qur’an, that depict the abstract,formless notion of divine oneness and truth. As a form of Islamic art,Arabic calligraphy is a visible, linguistic symbol of the divine unity.

The Origin and Evolution of Islamic Artistic Terminology

The European Renaissance and the movement it fuelled to explorehuman culture and civilization throughout the world spawned thegrowth of systematic thinking about philosophical themes relating tohuman feelings, auditory and visual perceptions, imagination, and theforms of expression to which such perceptions and human experiencesgive rise. ‘Beauty’ became the object of study as a new area of humanknowledge that was linked at once to religion, philosophy and the sci-entific approach to learning. The study of art as distinguished fromscience and literature emerged in the mid-seventeenth century ceunderthe name ‘aesthetics’ or ‘the philosophy of art.’

Spurred on by the materialist thought of the European Renaissancefounded on science, technology, capital, industrial production, culturalcreativity, and discovery in the geographical, natural and humanrealms alike, the study of art became a manifestation of the historicalevolution of human culture and identity, a form of cultural advance-ment, and a hallmark and vital mainstay of the humanistic movement,

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which was marked by heightened awareness of the cosmos and ahumanistic vision of history, life, and destiny.

The intellectual trends emerging from Europe presented a tremen-dous challenge to the intellectual identity and social and culturaltraditions of most of the peoples of the world, particularly those of theIslamic Arab East. Consequently, European cultural inputs such asindustries, sciences, literature, art and Western traditions influencedthe social structures of contemporary Arab-Islamic culture.

Among the most important features of this European scientific andcultural influence on Islamic consciousness overall, and on ArabIslamic consciousness in particular, were shifts in the Arab-Islamicunderstanding of the terms ‘civilization’ and ‘culture’ and, as a conse-quence, in the understanding of the term ‘art.’ Similarly, the term‘civilization,’ which had once referred simply to a settled existence inone place, such as a city or town as opposed to that of the wanderingnomad, took on a broader meaning such that it came to be associatedwith an overall way of life whose personal, social, behavioural, intel-lectual, economic and political dimensions signified intellectualmodernity, social advancement, and material prosperity.

With the translation of the terms ‘civilization’ and ‘culture’ into theArabic language, the Arab-Islamic world became home to everythingsemantically associated with these two terms by way of inventions,industries, traditions, relationships, movements, organizations, tech-nologies, theories, and expressions embodying a vast array of materialand non-material manifestations of human creativity.

This clear shift in modern, contemporary Arab-Islamic knowledgewas accompanied by a modified understanding of the Arabic termfann, which went from denoting either a type or species of entity or, bycontrast, manifestations of human creativity in a variety of areas,including those of industry, science and literature, to being a technicalterm of sorts that had specifically to do with the aesthetic realm.

The Arabic term fann (art) had at one time been associated with theconcepts of science, literature and industry in a broad and inclusivesense; now, however, its meaning narrowed to encompass solely theaesthetic realm. This shift may well have constituted one of the greatestcultural and epistemological challenges faced by Arab-Islamic


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consciousness in the nineteenth century ce/thirteenth century ah,which witnessed major interactions between the Islamic world and theEuropean West, as well as profound Westerly shifts in Islamic culture.Profound intellectual, linguistic and conceptual shifts in the structureof modern Islamic culture took place in response to new developmentsin Arabic and Islamic societies relating to science, education, accultur-ation and translation, which contributed to a new understanding of themeaning of fann and its significance in the realms of beauty, creativity,inner experience, and other areas of psychology and human emotion.

The Arab littérateur Rif¥¢ah R¥fi¢ al->ah~¥wÏ (d. 1290 ah/1873 ce)was among the first to translate French literary and cultural works intothe Arabic language. Al->ah~¥wÏ observed that “the Europeans havedivided human knowledge into two categories: the sciences and thearts. The field of Science encompasses the perceptions we arrive at viarational proofs and evidence, while the field of Art encompasses know-ledge relating to how to manufacture things in keeping with set rules.”

However, al->ah~¥wÏ and his colleagues in the translation endeav-our at the School of Languages established in 1254 ah/1839 ce underal->ah~¥wÏ’s leadership maintained a fundamental epistemologicallink between ‘science’ and ‘art’. Al->ah~¥wÏ and his team of translatorsviewed these two terms as bound by an important semantic link; hence,they maintained the possibility that the term ‘art’ (fann) might refer tosome aspects of ‘science’ (¢ilm) and, similarly, that the term ‘science’(¢ilm) might refer to some aspects of ‘art’ (fann).

This phenomenon may be observed, for example, in the book trans-lated from French into Arabic by a team at the School of Languagesunder al->ah~¥wÏ’s personal supervision entitled, Kashf Rum‰z al-Sirral-Ma|‰n fÏ Ta~bÏq al-Handasatih ¢al¥ al-Fun‰n (Unveiling the Symbolsof the Well-Kept Secret Concerning Application of Engineering to theArts). This work was described as “a book on the application of engi-neering and mechanics to crafts, industries, and the fine arts,” such asarchitecture, geography, astronomy, ship manufacture and construc-tion, the science of light, shadow and eclipse, carpentry, sculpting,printing, and typography, particularly given the fact that, as we aretold in the book’s Introduction, “The School of Languages possessesthe best of every art form.”


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The work undertaken by the School of Languages opened the doorto conceptual and terminological developments relating to the aware-ness of beauty and art. These developments were already taking place,to some extent, in Arab and Islamic culture, which had begun circulat-ing new expressions with semi-technical meanings such as al-fun‰nal-nafÏsah, al-fun‰n al-r¥qiyah, and al-fun‰n al-jamÏlah (which arevaried Arabic translations of the English term ‘fine arts’), the last ofwhich was most probably coined by A^mad F¥ris al-Shidy¥q (d. 1304ah/1887ce).

The intellectual and cultural shifts taking place in Arab-Islamicsocieties on the theoretical and practical planes alike began taking rootin varying degrees throughout the Arab world. This phenomenon wasresisted by the religious, academic and cultural elites of the day throughattempts to adapt the incoming elements to the precepts of Islamic law,as well as through the linguistic adaptation of most of the newly intro-duced Western terms referring to objects, techniques, concepts and thelike.

In the area of Islamic law, a discipline known as fiqh al-naw¥zil (thejurisprudence of unprecedented cases) attempted to address some ofthe newly introduced cultural phenomena which, in the field of art,included drawing, painting, pictorial representation, singing, acting,and other nascent forms of creative expression making their appear-ance in Arab-Islamic society. This branch of Islamic jurisprudencesought to dispel people’s confusion over how to respond, in keepingwith Islamic law, to these newly introduced phenomena, some ofwhich were judged to be forbidden, and others permissible. Photog-raphy is an example of a cultural import from the West which wasruled to be acceptable by the standards of Islamic law.

Through its various legal rulings, this type of aims-based jurispru-dence helped create a social niche for the so-called ‘fine arts,’ whichShaykh Muhammad Abduh (d. 1322 ah/1904 ce) was among the firstto accept and promote in Arab-Islamic society. Aims-based jurispru-dence also helped to establish a linguistic niche in Islamic culture formany terms used to refer to incoming cultural elements and their asso-ciated concepts, such as telephone, telegraph, photograph, automobile,phonograph, radio, sabbatical, opera, bank, and others.


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Writers and other members of the intelligentsia contributed to creating a home for industries, literary genres, traditions, items ofapparel, instruments and the other entities newly entering Arab-Islamic societies from the West as signs of advancement and progress.They accomplished this task through efforts to modernize education,interviews, discussions and public debates, and via books, newspaperand magazine articles and other media. By virtue of such efforts, indi-rect linguistic, stylistic and terminological approaches were made tothese newly introduced elements in both the vernacular and formalArabic. The pioneering Arab intellectual Salamah Musa (d. 1377ah/1958 ce) – the first to promote the use of the Arabic term thaq¥fahas a rendering of the foreign term ‘culture’ – highlighted the knowledge-related aspect of art. For this reason, Musa held that art is more closelylinked to culture than it is to civilization, since civilization has to do primarily with a society’s material existence, whereas culture has moreto do with a society’s mentality, attitudes and thought life.

The littérateur Tawfiq al-Hakim (d. 1407 ah/1987 ce) played asimilar role by identifying the epistemological nature of the art of theatre. It was Tawfiq al-Hakim who coined the term masra^ as theArabic equivalent of the word ‘theatre,’ and who won theatre a promi-nent place in modern Arab culture.

A number of direct stylistic and terminological approaches to thistopic were pursued by linguists and Arabic language academies, whichattempted to adapt numerous words, terms and concepts derived frommodern Western culture to the Arabic language. At the same time,earnest efforts were expended to pre-empt further linguistic encroach-ment by moving promptly to coin Arabic equivalents of foreign terms.Other approaches included Arabization, translation, categorization,and introduction of new terms into Arabic lexicons.

The modern study of terms and concepts of relevance to Islamic artwas pioneered by scholar and littérateur Ahmad Taymur Pasha (d.1348 ah/1930 ce). Taymur authored a number of books on this sub-ject, the best known of which is his groundbreaking al-Ta|wÏr ¢ind al-¢Arab (Pictorial Representation Among the Arabs), which set the tonefor future studies in the field of Islamic art and related terminology.This contribution of Taymur’s was of significant academic value given


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the many Arabic terms and concepts it contained of relevance to the artof Islamic pictorial representation, such as tadhhÏb (gilding or illumi-nation), takfÏt (inlaying or platework), al-tazmÏk (tazmique, a style ofIslamic illumination associated with the Mamluk era), khay¥l al-·ill or~ayf al-khay¥l (shadow plays), and others.

Another scholar whose work paved the way for the creation of anArabic lexicon relating to Islamic art was linguist and author BishrFaris (d. 1382 ah/1963 ce), who took great pains to trace the roots ofIslamic artistic terminology in the Arabic language with a view to con-structing the language of Islamic art based on the historical usage ofspecialized terms. Bishr Faris’s numerous linguistic contributionsinclude:

• A brief study published in the journal of Egypt’s Royal Academy ofthe Arabic Language (Majallat Majma¢ al-Lughah al-¢Arabiyyahal-MalakÏ) in 1353 ah/1935 ce entitled, FÏ I|~il¥^at al-M‰sÏq¥ waal-Falsafah (On Musical and Philosophical Terminology).

• A book entitled, I|~il¥^¥t ¢Arabiyyah li Fann al-Ta|wÏr (ArabicTerminology Relating to the Art of Pictorial Representation).

• An Arabic-French index consisting of more than eighty terms deal-ing with the art of pictorial representation, which appears at the end of his book entitled, Sirr al-Zakhrafah al-Isl¥miyyah (Secret ofIslamic Ornamental Art).

• A book entitled, Al-Fann al-QudsÏ fÏ al-Ta|wÏr al-Isl¥mÏ al-Awwal(Sacred Art: Early Islamic Pictorial Representation).

Nevertheless, these modern pioneering efforts in the study ofArabic-Islamic artistic terminology under the auspices of the Academyof Arabic Language in Cairo pale in significance before early Muslimscholars’ treatment of Islamic artistic terminology in their writings onbeauty from an Islamic perspective and on various genres of Islamicart. Al-F¥r¥bÏ (d. 339 ah/950 ce) provided a large number of technicaldefinitions relating to the fields of both music and pictorial representa-tion. In the field of music, for example, he proposed the followingterms and definitions: al-al^¥n al-mulidhdhah (pleasurable tunes), hedefined as tunes whose only function is to bring auditory enjoyment tothe listener; al-al^¥n al-mutakhayyalah (imaginative tunes) are tunes


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that benefit the listener by inspiring the formation of mental imagesmuch as ornamentation and statues stimulating the visual imagination.To these al-F¥r¥bÏ added the term al-al^¥n al-infi¢¥liyyah (affectivetunes), which bring about affective reactions in the listener, whether byintensifying or calming a person’s emotions; and the term al-al^¥n al-ghin¥’iyyah (vocal tunes). Al-F¥r¥bÏ proposed that human beings havean instinctual desire to seek pleasure, imagination, and affect, and thatdifferent types of tunes address these instinctual desires.

Other ancient Muslim contributors to the study of the musical artsinclude Ibn SÏn¥ (d. 370 ah/980 ce), whose terminological studies re-lating to what he referred to as jaw¥mi¢ ¢ilm al-m‰sÏq¥ (musicologicalcompilations) make up a chapter in his book al-Shif¥’ (Healing). Thesecompilations offered explanations of numerous terms and conceptsrelating to tunes (al^¥n), notes (angh¥m) and musical instruments.Ab‰ ¤ayy¥n al-Taw^ÏdÏ (d. 414 ah/1023 ce) likewise contributed anumber of foundational terms to the language of the art of Arabic calligraphy.

Miskawayh (d. 421 ah/1030 ce) was among the first Arab histori-ans to discuss the creative experiments undertaken by Muslim artists inthe area of what he termed ¢ilm al-ta|¥wÏr, or ‘the science of visual rep-resentations,’ and to which Ikhw¥n al-ßaf¥ (third century ah/ninthcentury ce) referred as tazwÏq and/or al-ziw¥qah (from the verbzawwaqah, which Hans Wehr defines as meaning to adorn, embellish,ornament, or to picture, visualize (i.e. a story) in one’s imagination).

Al-Ghaz¥lÏ (d. 505 ah/1111 ce) divided the notion of beauty intothe categories of al-jam¥l al-^aqÏqÏ (literal beauty), al-jam¥l al-~abÏ¢Ï(natural beauty), and al-jam¥l al-ins¥nÏ (human beauty). He also distinguished between al-jam¥l al-b¥~inÏ (inner beauty) and al-jam¥lal-·¥hirÏ (outward beauty), and identified various levels at which theyare perceived by the inner and outer eye. Hence, al-Ghaz¥lÏ’s thoughtson the topics of beauty and art and their associated terminology con-tain the nucleus of an epistemological Islamic aesthetic.

These early scholars’ writings on the topics of beauty and art andthe distinctive terms associated with them might have served as a valu-able basis for the Arabic Language Academy’s decisions concerningthe appropriate terms to apply to the concepts associated with


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Islamic art and architecture. Nevertheless, the Academy’s humbleearly attempts in this area lacked seriousness and boldness of vision.

The first refereed Arabic lexicon in the field of Islamic art was enti-tledMu¢jam Alf¥· al-¤a\¥rah wa Mu|~ala^¥t al-Fun‰n (Dictionary ofTerms Relating to Civilization and the Arts). This dictionary wasbroadly recognized for its inclusion of terms from a variety of artisti-cally related areas – the art of visual representation, modern artisticschools of thought, sculpting, drawing and painting, pottery andceramics. It also contained decisions made by Cairo’s Arabic LanguageAcademy on terminology relating to Islamic architecture. In fact, how-ever, the language used to discuss Islamic art is still dominated bynumerous foreign concepts and terms. This fact serves as evidence thatalong with other academic institutions as well as Arab researchers andlinguists both current and past, the Arabic Language Academy has notsubjected the language of Islamic art to the thorough and critical exam-ination needed to liberate it from the restraints of Orientalism andWesternization or, at the very least, to infuse it with greater Arabic andIslamic authenticity.

Translation and Islamic Artistic Terminology

Initial attempts to ground artistic terminology and concepts in theArabic-Islamic tradition were modest and hesitant, most of them tak-ing place within the context of what one might term ‘culturalWesternization,’ which was viewed as the symbol of modernity andcontemporaneity. Consequently, the Arab linguists and intellectualsengaged in these endeavors devoted approximately equal attention toArab-Islamic terms and concepts and those that originated in foreigncontexts. This trend began to entrench itself in the circles of linguistsand other researchers into Islamic antiquities, arts, architecture, andcrafts, which constituted a fledgling epistemological field and academicspeciality. In the context of this new field, modern Western civilizationrepresented a cultural and linguistic challenge to Arab-Muslim schol-ars, who were now spurred to think scientifically about how to identifythe roots of Islamic art-related terminology and systematize it into anestablished lexicon.


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Bishr Faris’s method of rooting foreign terms related to Islamic artin the Arab-Islamic tradition involved going back to Arabic lexiconsand literature and taking on the linguistic and cultural challenges oftranslating these terms into Arabic. The expressive and communica-tional challenges reflected in the act of translation continue to casttheir shadow over endeavours in the areas of research, writing, educa-tion and culture, especially as they touch upon art-related terms thatappear in Western writings on Islamic antiquities, Islamic architectureand other forms of Islamic art.

Most Western studies divide Islamic art into two major categories.The first of these is termed ‘the major arts,’ which include architecture,sculpting, mosaics, wall murals, ornamental inscriptions on wood andplaster, and the like. The second is termed ‘the minor arts,’ referred toat times as ‘the applied arts,’ which include crafted items made frommetal, wood, pottery and glass, as well as ornamentation of copies ofthe Qur’an, manuscript illumination, mosaics, and ancient writings.

The earliest and best-known Arabic term for this category is al-fun‰n al-far¢iyyah al-isl¥miyyah (literally, the subsidiary Islamic arts).This term appears to have been coined by Zaki Muhammad Hasan,who wrote, “Al-fun‰n al-far¢iyyah is the Arabic phrase we have usedthus far to translate the English term ‘the minor arts,’ the French termarts mineure, and the German term kleinkunst. We might also trans-late it as al-fun‰n al-|in¥¢iyyah (‘the industrial arts’) or al-fun‰n al-ta~bÏqiyyah (‘the applied arts’). It is also translated sometimes as al-fun‰n al-zukhrufiyyah (‘the decorative arts’).”

However this term is translated, it refers to art applied to movableobjects, be they functional or decorative. At the same time, it must berecognized that the two-way division mentioned here is quite vague.Some art historians include carpets, for example, within the categoryof ‘the minor arts,’ while others do not.

In this context, a work deserving of commendation is the studydone by archaeological researcher Ahmad Muhammad Isa on termswhich appeared in A Handbook of Muhammadan Art by Dr. M. S.Dimand, who served for more than thirty years as curator of theIslamic Art collection at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.Highly accurate and reliable, Dimand’s pioneering book succeeds in


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meeting the linguistic challenges that have traditionally faced theprocess of translating terms relating to Islamic art from English intoArabic.

Isa’s approach in this work was to choose Arabic terms that bestmatched their English counterparts in both meaning and frequency ofusage even if they were colloquial in nature. He tells us that the termshe has chosen are “the words used by actual practitioners of the art, myaim being to determine the meanings of the Arabic words as they relatedirectly to the art or craft itself, and to avoid having more than oneArabic translation for each English term.”

This invaluable piece of translation-related research became thebasis for the first small English-Arabic dictionary of art-related terms.After taking English words of relevance to Islamic art, Isa providedArabic equivalents for them and added these to his translation ofDimand’s book, his ultimate goal being to produce a comprehensive,accurate and authoritative Arabic-English dictionary of the Islamicarts.

Nearly four decades later, Isa expanded his dictionary with addi-tions taken from his translation of still another book on the topic byOktay Aslan Aba. The expanded edition, a pioneering work in its fieldcontaining more than 1,400 terms in the areas of Islamic architecture,crafts and other arts, was published under the title, Mu|~ala^¥t al-Fannal-Isl¥mÏ.

The Genesis of the Terminology of Islamic Art

The term ‘Islamic art’ began to emerge explicitly as a subject ofOrientalist-Islamic study between the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-turies ah/nineteenth and twentieth centuries ce, at which time the termcame to be used to refer to architectural monuments, illumined manu-scripts, crafted items and rarities which were of cultural interest withinthe field of museology.

Major Western museums’ need to identify Islamic works of art andartistic relics and to ‘market’ them culturally to museum goers may haveled to a major semantic shift in the term ‘Islamic art’ whereby, insteadof referring simply to a museum collection representing a culture or


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historical time period, it came to denote an entire epistemological fieldthat could take its place alongside science and literature. Influenced bythe West, Muslim societies began to assimilate the concept of art assomething related primarily to beauty and creativity, and specificallyIslamic art as a basic component of modern and contemporary culture.

Nevertheless, despite its widespread use in modern times, the generalappellation ‘Islamic art’ has yet to be defined in a clear and consistentmanner. The roots of this difficulty can be traced back to the thirteenthcentury ah/nineteenth century ce, from which point we might map theexpression’s historical and terminological trajectory as follows:

1) Between 1289-1294 ah/1873-1878 ce, two separate books werepublished under the title L’Art Arabe (Arab Art), one by JulesBurgoin, and the other by Prisse D’Avennes. It thus appears that theterm ‘Arab art’ was being used commonly to refer to the Islamic rar-ities, antiquities and works of art that were spreading across Europeat the time. However, scholars and historians held differing viewson how to refer to these articles, as evidenced by the varied titles ofthe relevant studies that were being published in succession at thetime.

2) The term ‘saracenic art’ was coined by historian Lane Pooles,whose Handbook of Saracenic Artwas published in 1303 ah/1886ce. However, it should be noted that this appellation has rarelybeen used in the academic study of Islamic art, and is thus of minorsignificance in the present context.

3) From the mid-nineteenth century, the most widely used term forIslamic art was ‘Mohammadan art,’ which appeared in the titles ofa number of works published during this period, among themMohammadan Architecture in Egypt and Palestine by Martin S.Briggs (1299ah/1882ce).

4) The term ‘Muslim Art’ made its first appearance with the publica-tion in 1324 ah/1907 ce of the Manuel de l’Art Musulman by re-nowned French Orientalist and artist M. Saladin. This last-namedphrase was significant for the academic role it played in preparingthe way, albeit gradually, for a shift to the use of the composite term‘Islamic art.’


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5) As for the term ‘Islamic art,’ it made its first explicit appearance inthe early fourteenth century ah/twentieth century ce, that is, in theyear 1327 ah/1910 ce, at which time several exhibitions of Islamiccrafts, rarities and works of art were hosted in Europe under thetitle ‘Islamic art.’

The composite term resulting from the combination of ‘Islam’ and‘art’ became a generic term for everything that could be classified underthe rubric of Islamic artistic, aesthetic and creative craftsmanship. Assuch, ‘Islamic art’ became the term used most consistently to refer tothis craft’s genres and specific forms within the context of Islamic visualculture. At the same time, the ongoing import of terms and conceptsfrom abroad hindered the development of an unambiguous nomencla-ture for the various expressions of Islamic art.

This difficulty is illustrated by the following six phenomena:

1) The unfamiliar nature of many of the key terms employed in theWestern study of Islamic art, or what we might term ‘Orientalistaesthetics,’ which was couched in a variety of foreign languageswhich were responsible for coining nearly all the elements of the relevant academic nomenclature, including the term ‘Islamic art’itself.

2) The borrowing of many of the concepts and expressions employedto explain the critical and philosophical terms of relevance to‘Islamic art’ and its various subtopics, some of which had beenheretofore unknown in Arab-Islamic culture. These include, forexample, the term ‘school’ in the sense of a current of thought or anartistic movement. The term ‘school’ is used broadly in this sense inmodern and contemporary studies of Islamic art, which containlengthy discussions of ‘schools of Islamic art’ despite the fact thatthe term ‘school’ (madrasah) was not used traditionally in theArabic language or in Islamic culture with reference to anything buta place of learning.

3) The introduction of certain Western technical terms into the con-temporary language of Islamic art. One such term is ‘technique,’which was first translated as al-ikhr¥j al-fannÏ in studies dealingwith ways of drawing decorative shapes and the like.


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4) A lack of precision in the translation of foreign terms relating toIslamic art into the Arabic language. An example of such impreci-sion can be seen in the fact that terms such as illustration, ornamen-tation, decoration and others were all rendered into Arabic via asingle word, that is, zakhrafah.

5) The use of Arabized foreign words in relation to Islamic art to suchexcess that this came to appear foreign to the Qur’an and Arab cul-ture, and was thus difficult to understand. One of the most salientexamples of this phenomenon hasoccurred in relation to terms taken overinto Arabic from Turkish, such as hatayand romi, which refer to styles of Islamicornamentation that developed during theOttoman era. The Arabized term muqar-na| (a type of ornamented vaulting)continues to be used widely in the field ofIslamic art.

6) Few of those concerned with Islamic art devoted significant effortto rooting artistic terminology in the Arabic language by referringback to the Arabic lexicon itself, or by drawing attention to themany terms and concepts of Arabic and Islamic origin that haveentered other languages. One such term is tawrique (Arabic,tawrÏq), meaning to illustrate with leaves, which made its way fromArabic into Castilian Spanish, where it became an artistic termdefined as ‘ornamentation in the shapes of small leaves and palmbranches,’ and which reentered the Arabic-Islamic artistic lexiconas fann al-tawrÏq. The Arabic word tawrÏq has itself been used byArab historians. Ab‰ al-¤asan al-MuqrÏ, for example, mentionedsomeone by the name of Mu^ammad Ibn A^mad who was knowl-edgeable about the craft of tawrique.


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Muqarna|

Tawrique


Western Manufacture of the Islamic Artistic Lexicon

Both before and after the birth of the term ‘Islamic art,’ work was beingdone to develop a nomenclature for everything relating to this field byway of artistic productions, antiquities, theories, techniques, styles,shapes, images and symbols. This process took place through theinvention of new terms and phrases in the context of the Western artisticculture that grew out of the European Renaissance. The early eleventhcentury ah/seventeenth century ce witnessed harbingers of the devel-opment of an artistic nomenclature with the coining in 1019 ah/1611ceof the Italian term ‘Arabesco.’ Some early non-Arabic lexicons iden-tify the syllable ‘Arab’ as the morphological and semantic nucleus ofthis new artistic term referring to ornamental plant designs. The termthen made its way into other European languages, including French,German, and English, where it took the form of ‘Arabesque.’

Some Islamic art historians, such as Ernest Kuhnel, hold that theterm ‘Arabesque’ was invented in the late thirteenth century ah/nine-teenth century ce by the Austrian-born art historian Alois Riegle(1858-1905 ce), who is viewed as one of the founders of the disciplineof the history and philosophy of art.

Modern Arab and Muslim researchers have differed over how totranslate the term ‘Arabesque’ into Arabic. Some of the possibilitiesproposed include, for example, al-tawshÏ^(literally, adorning or dress-ing with a wish¥^, an ornamented belt or sash), al-raqsh (adornment,embellishment), al-¢arabasa, al-tarqÏn al-zakhrafÏ (‘ornamental script’),al-zakhrafah al-¢arabiyyah al-muwarraqah (Arabic leaved ornamenta-tion), al-zakhrafah bi al-fur‰¢ al-nab¥tiyyah (ornamental with stemsand branches), al-zakhrafah al-nab¥tiyyah (ornamentation with plantshapes), and possibly others.

Post-‘Islamic Art’ Terminology

Following the appearance of the phrase ‘Islamic art,’ numerous otherterms and concepts originating in the West continued to emerge andbecome vital elements of the language of Islamic aesthetics. The fol-lowing are examples:


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1) The Spanish term Morisco (French, Moresque, English, Moorish)appeared in 1019 ah/1611 ce in reference to anything that pos-sessed the features of Moroccan art and architecture. From 1165ah/1752 ce onward, these terms came to refer to both Moroccanand Andalusian ornamental styles of Islamic architecture, craftsand arts as exemplified in geometrical ornamental designs and latticework, particularly those found in Moroccan ceramic workknown as zulayj (faience, ornamental tile and ceramic).

2) The word ‘miniature,’ of Italian origin, which appeared for the firsttime in 994 ah/1586 ce, entered the French and English languagesin approximately 1365 ah/1946 ce in reference to small, detailedimages, sometimes painted or gilded, used to embellish manu-scripts. It is difficult to determine exactly when this term entered thelanguage of Islamic art. What can be said, however, is that the termwas often simply transliterated in Arabic as miniy¥t‰r. The word‘miniature’ is thought to have first been translated from French intoArabic by linguist Bishr Faris, who rendered it as munamnam¥t(meaning, ‘adorned,’ ‘embellished,’ ‘ornamented’).

3) Unlike the word Abstractionism, which appeared in around 1344ah/1926ce, the word ‘abstraction’ (tajrÏd) first began circulating inEuropean languages in 955 ah/1549 ce in a sense that bore no par-ticular connection to art per se. By 1364 ah/1945 ce the formerterm was being used consistently in association with a new trend inWestern art that was marked by an absence of realistic or concretedetails of a painting’s subject matter. Abstract art (Arabic, al-fannal-tashkÏlÏ) involved a process of separating form from substancethrough a particular use of colors, lines, and geometric arrange-ments to create an artistic form that would point symbolicallybeyond itself to deeper meanings. This is the process that came to beknown as ‘abstract art.’


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2

Unity and Diversity in

the Theory of Islamic Art

the principle of unity and diversity is one of the primaryphilosophical and methodological underpinnings for our understand-ing of human beings, civilization and art. This principle gives rise totwo basic types of theory. The first of these is a general theory thatviews unity and diversity as phenomena that are intuitively under-stood. According to this theory, people have an instinctive awarenessof existing naturally within a broad, diverse context. Both unity anddiversity are seen as entering organically into most, if not all, areas oflife, including religious, philosophical and scientific explanations ofthe movement of history and the evolution of human civilization andknowledge. The second, more specific, type of theory views unity anddiversity as a conundrum to be resolved in the realms of philosophy,science, literature, art, and other areas of human knowledge. This theory thus treats unity and diversity as objects of study, discussion,and methodical analysis.

Based on this classification of theories of unity and diversity andtheir place in the epistemological discourse relating to Islamic art, theprinciple of unity and diversity may be said to be the semantic focusand epistemological nerve of the theory of Islamic art.

Hegel (d. 1831 ce) was the first philosopher to discuss the divineunity as a theme of Islamic art. The paper presented by RichardEttinghausen (d. 1979 ce) on interaction and cohesion in Islamic art atthe Orientalists’ convention held in 1955 on unity and diversity inIslamic civilization may have marked the beginning of serious study ofthis topic.

Historian Ahmad Fikri may have been the first contemporary Arabresearcher to attempt to base a theory of Islamic art on the elements ofunity between Arabness and Islam. And the last to do so may have been

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Muslim thinker Isma¢il al Faruqi, who discussed the theory of Islamicart in light of the relationship between art and the divine oneness(taw^Ïd), which he viewed as the source and foundation of the concep-tualization of beauty and its artistic expression.

On the Artistic Concept of Unity and Diversity

The duality of unity and diversity is a vital theme of both Islamic cul-tural jurisprudence and the theory of Islamic art, in that:

• Unity consists in the complementarity of the artistic elements withina homogeneous geometric pattern, just as the members of a singlebody complement one another in fixed proportions.

• As for diversity – which is inseparable from unity – it consists in theordering of disparate elements through relationships of similarity,repetition, combination and harmonious composition in a mannerthat achieves interaction and cohesion in a work of art. These elements together lend the work its aesthetic perfection, thereby setting it apart as belonging to the realm of art in particular, and notto some other realm of civilization such as science or literature, forexample, given that this diversity is the essence of art.

Islamic art thus has a subjective-aesthetic dimension, and an objec-tive-civilizational dimension. The subjective-aesthetic dimension maybe seen in the fact that Islamic art is made up of numerous parts or unitsthat come together to form a broader design. Each unit represents whatmight be thought of, on one hand, as a self-contained expressive entity,and on the other hand, as part of a broader structure through which theaesthetic value of Islamic architecture, arts and crafts is made visible.

As for the objective-civilizational dimension, it is observable in thefact that the singularity of Islamic doctrine and culture guides thechoice of shapes and symbols in such a way as to convey a unified artis-tic expression of the essence of Islamic civilization and its message ofthe divine unity.


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The Unity and Diversity of Islamic Art:Civilizational Background

Since the study of Islamic civilization was officially established as partof the curricula offered in Western educational institutions due to theintimate link between Islamic art and Islamic civilization, the topic ofunity and diversity in Islamic art has been a subject of debate amongscholars.

Islamic civilization is marked by its comprehensiveness, the unity ofits components, as well as richness and originality in the fields of sci-ence, culture, and the arts. Additionally, Islamic civilization stands outamong the civilizations of the world for its geographical reach and itslengthy period of ascendancy. By the same token, Islamic art is markedby a tremendous variety that is visible in its crafts and ornamentation,the regions it has penetrated, and the individuals whose creativity hascontributed to its development. The variety displayed in Islamic artforms is so marked, in fact, that it is difficult to find two pieces ofIslamic art that are exactly the same. Art is of central epistemologicalimportance to Islamic civilization. The link between Islamic civiliza-tion and Islamic art is, in fact, an exemplary expression of the singlespirit that enlivens them both. This ‘spirit’ might be described as theepistemological system, law, or dialectic which serves as the basis forthe overall Islamic cultural system of arts, architecture and crafts.

The epistemological approaches taken to the problem of unity and diversity are as numerous and varied as the facets of Islamic civilization itself, foremost among them the arts, architecture, andcrafts. Numerous historical, cultural and archeological studies sup-port the conclusion that Islamic art represents the clearest expressionof Islamic civilization’s material prosperity and progress. Both in itsbroader sense as a phenomenon that encompasses all useful materialcreations, and in its narrower sense as including only works of beautyart may be defined as the manifestation of human creativity as it gener-ates the material and non-material components of a civilization. Arthelps a society to achieve greater stability, cultural identity, and thecapacity to develop a refined approach to cultural and materialexchange with others for the sake of prospering the Earth.


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In fact, the aim of prospering the Earth lies at the heart of Islamicdiscourse in both its spiritual and cultural aspects: The faith-based,religious aspect of this aim rests on the principle of stewardship, that is,human beings’ role as God’s representatives on Earth. This role is spoken of in S‰rah al-Baqarah, 2:30, which reads, “And Lo! ThySustainer said unto the angels: ‘Behold, I am about to establish uponearth one who shall inherit it.’ They said: ‘Wilt Thou place on it such aswill spread corruption thereon and shed blood whereas it is we whoextol Thy limitless glory, and praise Thee, and hallow Thy name?’[God] answered: ‘Verily, I know that which you do not know.’” As forthe cultural-civilizational aspect of prospering the Earth, it rests onhuman beings’ innate capacity for creativity in the realms of science,literature, art, and other areas of social life, communication and mate-rial development.

It may be helpful here to clarify the meaning of the Arabic term fa\l,which is rendered variously as favour, grace, generosity, excellence,credit, merit, benefit, and abundance. In the Islamic perspective, theterm fa\l is an ideal that rests on the notion of increasing an entity’sbeauty and perfection. In other words, fa\l is a value that is added to anobject, a person, a place, a time, or an action. From this we derive theterm muf¥\alah, the act of weighing or comparing different entities todetermine which is superior to the other, as well as the concept oftaf¥\ul, that is, the existence of varying degrees of excellence amongpeople, lineages, fields of learning, literature and other forms of writ-ing, arts and crafts, as well as other elements, components andmanifestations of a civilization. Hence we derive the concept of the virtuous soul (al-nafs al-f¥\ilah), superior civilization (al-^a\¥rah al-f¥\ilah), meritorious, edifying speech (al-kal¥m al-f¥\il), the Mufa\\-aliy¥t (an anthology of choice pre-Islamic poems), and other entitiesand phenomena that can be described as meritorious, virtuous, excel-lent and the like.

Islamic art is the most appropriate realm in which to situate the relationship between unity and diversity in Islamic civilization,since this art plays a central role in Islamic civilization’s creative formation, its epistemological system, and its cultural identity. Thearts, architecture and crafts have a far more intense and ubiquitous


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presence in Islamic civilization than they do in other civilizations.Consequently, Islamic civilization may fairly be deemed a superior civilization by virtue of, on one hand, the unity of its universal values(truth, goodness, and beauty), and, on the other hand, the diverse waysin which these values are manifested in people’s individual and sociallives.

Given the simultaneous unity and diversity of these universal values in Islamic civilization, this is the civilization that gives fullestexpression to the aesthetic meaning of the unity-diversity dialecticmanifested in Islamic art.

A Historical Reading of the Unity and Diversity of Islamic Art

Most theories of Islamic art over the centuries have been based on thenotion of unity and diversity as a philosophical foundation for thisart’s vitality and importance and its impact on aesthetic knowledge,both Islamic and non-Islamic, as well as its respected position and itshistorical role in human civilization as a whole, both Islamic and non-Islamic.

A number of historians have endeavoured to come up with innova-tive theories of relevance to the vast field of Islamic art. In so doing,they have adopted either traditional historical and descriptive methods,or modern philosophical approaches (aesthetic, esoteric, expressionis-tic, symbolic) to explicate the organic connection between Islamic artand its origins. In the various regions that came under the banner ofIslam, indigenous art forms were melted down in a single Islamic crucible and integrated into a broader Islamic culture which, thoughbearing a consistent stamp worldwide, allowed for differences of detailand individual elements. The material unity of Islamic civilization thusserved as the vehicle for a spiritual and psychic unity which mirroredthe Islamic creed of divine oneness.

The following are examples of historical studies which have con-cluded that the most significant distinguishing feature of Islamic art isthe link between unity and diversity:


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1) Through his historical studies of various architectural, decorativeand applied styles – sometimes known as ‘subsidiary arts’ (al-fun‰nal-far¢iyyah), Ernst Kuhnel (1882-1964) concluded that Islamic artmakes no distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ styles, butrather combines them in a single work.

2) According to Georges Marcais (1876-1962), Islamic art has a dis-tinctive character that sets it apart from all other art forms of theancient world. The Islamic religion and the Arabic language boundthe various styles and schools of art into a unity that revealed itselfmost particularly in religious architecture.

3) According to E. J. Grube (1932-2011), the structural unity of theworld of Islam manifests itself in the ethnic and geographic unity ofthe Arabic, Persian, and Turkish cultural elements.

Unity and Diversity in Islamic Art: Perspectives and Interpretations

The various perspectives and interpretations that have been put for-ward in relation to the theme of unity and diversity in Islamic art mightbe divided into four groups: (1) those that view unity as the heart ofIslamic life, (2) those that view diversity as the essence of art, (3) thosethat focus on unity in diversity, and (4) those that focus on diversity inunity.

These perspectives and interpretations have been presented in thecontext of studies on the following topics:

Unified Origin, Diverse SourcesThe issue of the origin and sources of Islamic art has been a subject ofongoing controversy among scholars. According to religious, culturaland scientific theories which draw primarily on the Western epistemo-logical system that grew out of the European Renaissance and itsOrientalist extensions, Islamic art is a late phenomenon that developedin response to external or objective factors and influences, such as artforms that preceded or were contemporary with it.


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Some historical studies conclude that immediately prior to and following the dawn of Islam, Arabs “had no art of their own worthmentioning.” Such studies go on to assert that when the Muslims con-quered Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Persia (Iran), they adopted the refined artforms found in these lands, thus paving the way for the emergence andgradual evolution of an Islamic artistic style. This fledgling Islamicstyle was derived in particular from Byzantine and Sassanid art, withChristian art in Egypt, Syria and Iraq being one source of Islamic art, atleast in its early beginnings.

This Orientalist hypothesis was met with objections by some schol-ars, who set out to refute theories that posited an ‘Arab vacuum,’‘Islamic borrowing,’ and external sources for Islamic art.

Arab and Muslim researchers have presented alternative theoriesaccording to which Islamic art derives from genuine Arab and Islamicsources. Proponents of these alternative theories hold that prior toIslam the Arabs had had numerous artistic monuments on the ArabianPeninsula and elsewhere. After adopting the Islamic religion, the Arabsthen put their minds, imaginations and emotions to use in its service. Itwas on this basis alone, according to this alternative theory, thatIslamic art came into being and evolved from the early Islamic ages. Astime went on, Muslim theorists made efforts to identify the basic com-ponents of Islamic art and to assimilate what they saw as beautiful anduseful from other civilizations and their artistic traditions into theframework of a unified Arab-Islamic artistic expression.

Unity and Diversity in Cultural and Civilizational ElementsSome studies on Islamic art have focused on the cultural and civiliza-tional factors of relevance to this art’s Arab-Islamic origin. Rather thanrelying on particular works of art and their distinctive features, suchstudies have sought to identify the elements that have unified theIslamic artistic tradition across the boundaries of historical periodsand geographical regions.

The common elements that serve to unify Islamic art in its diversitycan be classified as either culturalor civilizational.

The cultural elements that played a role in the emergence and devel-opment of Islamic art include the Islamic creed, the Arabic language,


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and artistic expression. As Islam expanded into other territories, thedistinctive intellectual and cultural features of Islamic society and civi-lization permeated into the countries that had come under Muslimrule, and particularly upon their artistic and architectural traditions.This was made possible by the comprehensiveness of Islam’s teachingsand by its overall humanitarian and global stamp.

After the Islamic creed, the most powerful unifying factor in thisprocess was the Arabic language, which God had chosen to be themeans through which the Prophet (ßAAS)* would convey the messageof Islam. Given Arabic’s importance to Islam, its use became tanta-mount to a religious act; thus the prominence that came to be attachedto the art of Arabic calligraphy, which one scholar has described as“the noblest of all arts,” being at once an artistic expression of theIslamic creed, the Arabic language, and Arab-Islamic culture.

As for the civilizational factors that have contributed to Islamicart’s emergence and evolution, they can be summarized as follows: (1)The religious factor, which has manifested itself in the role played bythe mosque and the Qur’an in Islamic life and its aesthetic, practicaland applied arts; (2) the political factor, which can be observed in thefact that caliphs, sultans, kings, emirs and other Muslim rulers havepatronized various types of Islamic art; (3) the social factor, whichreveals itself in a trend among various classes of Islamic society acrosssuccessive ages to promote, preserve and organize arts and crafts viaprivate social institutions; (4) the intellectual factor, which has helpedin its turn to promote the arts through consciousness-raising, educa-tion, and other means of spreading Islamic culture and art; and (5) thescientific factor, which has lent major support to Islamic art throughthe facilitation of printing and written publication.

A number of scholars have explained the phenomenon of Islamicart as an outgrowth of the foregoing cultural and civilizational factors.Others, by contrast, have viewed these and other factors simply asobjective conditions and constraints that laid the groundwork for thegrowth, development and flowering of Islamic art. This perspectiveacknowledges that “the history of Islamic art is marked by a distinctive


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*(ßAAS) – ßall¥ All¥hu ¢alayhi wa sallam: May the peace and blessings of God beupon him. Said whenever the name of the Prophet Muhammed is mentioned.


unity despite its inherent diversity” while, at the same time, giving req-uisite consideration to the development of this art over a span of 1300years and its spread from the lands of Andalusia to the borders ofChina.

Islamic art is characterized by four distinctive features: the decora-tive use of geometric designs, stylized plant shapes, masterful depictionof people and imagery, and Arabic calligraphy. What contributed tothis artistic homogeneity was a regular, repeated succession of a num-ber of processes, namely: adoption, adaptation, invention, imitation,displacement, continuation and revival. Over the course of thirteencenturies and across a vast geographical expanse, this recurring seriesof processes served to achieve both evolution and continuity in therealm of Islamic art.

Unity of Style and Diversity of Artistic ElementsThe notion of unity and diversity is intimately linked to the epistemo-logical nature of Islamic art, particularly in view of the fact that whenan art is assessed critically and aesthetically, its structure is found to bebased more fully on elements, techniques and styles than on other com-ponents, such as theme, content, historical period, and the like.

Hence, most scholars of art, particularly those who study it from acritical-aesthetic point of view, tend to favour the view that stylisticunity is the primary distinguishing feature of the Islamic arts, and thisin spite of: (1) the differences among the arts of architecture, calligra-phy, drawing and painting, gilding, and so on, (2) the variety exhibitedby their formal elements, including dots, lines, circles, cones, and othergeometric figures; and (3) the diversity of their abstract values, such ascolor, texture, light, rhythm, space, and so on.

These formal elements and abstract values produce what we mightterm artistic unity, including linear unity, ornamental unity, architec-tural unity, etc. This unity in and of itself constitutes a complete andautonomous artistic element whereby images are complemented by orrepeated with similar or contrasting artistic elements or units. Thisunity exhibits itself in a geometric system or context which gives thework of art the distinctive epistemological form which, in the parlanceof art criticism, we refer to as ‘type’ or ‘style.’


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There is near unanimity among scholars that the stylistic unityobservable in Islamic art “is highly integrated despite the diversity ofits sources and influences.” Examples of this phenomenon could bedrawn from a number of different types of Islamic art. However, theIslamic art form most frequently drawn upon is that of Islamic orna-mentation, which possesses a unique technical and aesthetic stylismbased on repetition/similarity and/or variety in the ornamental unitsemployed, be they plant shapes or geometric figures.

This diversified stylistic unity may be said to rest on three funda-mental, interconnected foundations: (1) unity of design, which is basedon diversity in elements, forms, patterns, and structural layouts inIslamic architecture, arts and crafts; (2) a perception of this unity andof the levels of its geometrical-semantic formation based on a web ofrelationships and developing concepts; and (3) unity of purpose.Overall, the Islamic arts come together in the symbolic expression ofMuslim artists’ experience of the divine oneness in a manner that tran-scends regional and geographical disparities.

Unity of Identity and Diversity of Stylistic DistinctivesThe stylistic unity and aesthetic distinctiveness of Islamic art may wellpoint to a unified cultural and civilizational identity. Style is viewed asthe artwork’s inward or subjective aspect, and identity as the outwardor objective form that sets it apart from other entities. Art is art, not byvirtue of its raw materials, which are, for the most part, a result of geo-graphical happenstance but, rather, by virtue of its style of expression,its aesthetic content, and its manner of suggesting ideas. As for Islamicart, it is an aesthetic expression of Islam from within the Arab experi-ence. The data that make up this Arab experience have given Muslims’artistic output an identifiable cultural and civilizational stamp whichcan be seen, for example, in the uniform architectural styles foundthroughout the Islamic world, whose civilization is colored at once byArabism and Islam.

The most significant features of Islamic art are its universality andthe unity that has come from Arabism (Arab identity) and Islam. Arabidentity, embodied in the Arabic language and Arabic calligraphy,became the primary theme of Islamic ornamentation due to the beauty


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with which the Arabic script conveys the visible words of God. This iswhy European researchers came to refer to Islamic ornamentation as‘Arabesque’. Given the centrality of Islamic ritual prayer (Salah), themosque came to be viewed as a symbol of Islam – the religion of divineunity and oneness – which in turn brought about a uniformity of layoutand design among Muslim mosques worldwide.

Given the harmony and inseparability of the factors that make upArab Islamic civilization, from the Arabic language to the spiritualcohesion founded on the monotheistic character of Islam, someresearchers in this field have referred to Islamic art as ‘Arabo-Islamicart.’ Despite not having associated itself with the arts in the way thatChristianity and Buddhism have, for example, Islam has neverthelessgiven rise to an attitude and a way of life that have exerted a profoundinfluence on its architecture, its representational art, its style of orna-mentation, and the choice of materials used in the various Islamicregions. Despite the apparently homogeneous stamp of Islamic art, onecannot help but marvel at the tremendous diversity that exists from oneregion to another, and from one time period to another within the sameregion.

The Unity and Diversity of Islamic Art: An Islamic ReadingSome of the perspectives and interpretations offered in response toOrientalists’ theories on Islamic art have been based more on emotionalreactivity than on creative critiques that shed new light on the unityand diversity of Islamic art from a distinctly Islamic point of view.Hence, I will attempt in what follows to ground this theme in the basicIslamic origins and sources of what we might term ‘Islamic aesthetics.’The origins and sources of Islamic aesthetic knowledge are the Qur’an,the Prophetic Sunnah, the Islamic sciences of relevance to philosophy,language, rhetoric, mathematics, geometry, and optics, as well as themethod we might term, ‘Islamic art criticism,’ which entails an objec-tive reading of the unity and diversity of Islamic art.

The Islamic Theory of Unity and DiversityWe can discern the epistemological origin and essence of this theory inthe Islamic affirmation that ‘there is no god but God,’ and Islam’s


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acknowledgment of the intimate link between the divine unity and thediversity manifest in the creation. The divine unity is expressed in thewords, “He is God, the Creator, the Maker who shapes all forms andappearances! His [alone] are the attributes of perfection. All that is inthe heavens and on earth extols His limitless glory: for He alone isAlmighty, Truly Wise!” (S‰rah al-¤ashr, 59:24), and, “[Know,] then,[that] God is sublimely exalted, the Ultimate Sovereign, the UltimateTruth: there is no deity save Him, the Sustainer, in bountiful Almighti-ness enthroned!” (S‰rah al-Mu’min‰n, 23:116). As for the diversity ofcreation, it is spoken of in S‰rah al-Baqarah, 2:164, where we read:

Verily, in the creation of the heavens and of the earth, and the succession ofnight and day: and in the ships that speed through the sea with what is use-ful to man: and in the waters which God sends down from the sky, givinglife thereby to the earth after it had been lifeless, and causing all manner ofliving creatures to multiply thereon: and in the change of the winds, and theclouds that run their appointed courses between sky and earth: [in all this]there are messages indeed for people who use their reason.

The discourse found in the Qur’an and the Prophetic Sunnahreveals the broad dimensions of this perspective in the vastness of thecosmos and in the innate human longing to worship, to know, to cre-ate, to build civilizations, to communicate, to form community, and toengage in useful production on behalf of self and others. This discourseis addressed generally to humans and invisible beings (the jinn), butprimarily to human beings as creatures specially honored by GodAlmighty with the role of stewards on Earth. The epistemological andmethodological perspective reflected in Islamic discourse is informedby a series of dualities which emerge from the most fundamental dualityof all, that is, the intimate link between God – the One – and God’s various manifestations in the universe at large, and in people’s innerbeings. The classic Qur’anic statement of the divine unity is found inS‰rah al-Ikhl¥|, 112, which reads, “Say: He is the One God: God theEternal, the Uncaused Cause of All Being. He begets not, and neither isHe begotten; and there is nothing that could be compared with Him.”As for the diversity that has been produced out of this unity, it is spokenof in S‰rah Fu||ilat, 41:53: “In time We shall make them fully under-


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stand Our messages [through what they perceive] in the utmost hori-zons [of the universe] and within themselves, so that it will becomeclear unto them that this [revelation] is indeed the truth. [Still,] is it notenough [for them to know] that thy Sustainer is witness unto every-thing?” The cosmic dialectic of unity and diversity is perceived byhuman beings through worship. God declares, “And [tell them that] Ihave not created the invisible beings and men to any end other thanthat they may [know and] worship Me” (S‰rah al-Dh¥riy¥t, 51:56),where the act of worship is understood to include the act of knowingGod in God’s oneness.

Lastly there are the countless subsidiary dualities which grow out ofthe fundamental duality of unity and diversity: the seen and the unseen,the hidden and the manifest, majesty and beauty, the giving and receiv-ing of inspiration, creation and imitation, nature and manufacture.

As one Muslim thinker observed, “Perfection inheres in unity...andeverything possesses a perfection suited to it.” Hence, unity is seen asthe origin of everything in existence, while the variety that emanatesfrom this oneness can be perceived in all realms: in the Beautiful Namesof God as they point to His sublime attributes, in material reality, andin the mysteries of the soul observed through human civilization andgrowing knowledge and awareness.

Given the unbreakable bond that exists between unity and diversity,this duality has come to be seen as the essential core of human knowl-edge in general, and of Islamic knowledge in particular. In thisconnection, Ab‰ ¤ayy¥n al-Taw^ÏdÏ (d. 414ah/1023 ce) stated:

The True Creator, the One and Only, is the source and wellspring of allthings. It is from Him that abundance flows forth, and in Him that it dwin-dles and diminishes. The preposition ‘from’ as employed here does notindicate separation, nor does the preposition ‘in’ denote connection orunion. Rather, I am speaking on the level of reason, which makes judg-ments concerning this or that entity without affirming that such an entityenjoys some independent or separate existence. For the forms and bound-aries relating to words and things are negated in the realm of the Divine.Instead, they become reflections of spiritual entities in motion. In thesphere of the Divine, words draw us nearer to the Truth by ushering us intoa realm beyond ourselves. The better and more complete the reflectionsand the clearer the words, the subtler the movement and the more refined


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the perception. Consequently, all evidence and words should be deemedessentially equal when seen in the light of the Divine Oneness. This fact isillustrated perfectly in forms, lines, images and inscriptions, all of whichare infused with, surrounded by, and encompassed within unity. It isthrough unity that these things are fashioned and completed, and throughmultiplicity that they differ from one another in form and quality.

Al-Taw^ÏdÏ concludes his exposition of the Islamic epistemologicalperspective on unity and diversity with the words, “I seek God’s pro-tection from [every] craft that does not point to the One Divine orinvites us to worship Him, acknowledge His unicity and divine rightsover us, seek His protection, endure His decrees with patience, andsubmit to His commands.”

The Artistic Theory of Unity and DiversityBy analyzing the techniques employed in Islamic art – including therepetition of similar and contrasting geometric figures and other ornamental shapes and linear images (as in Arabesque and Arabic cal-ligraphy) – in light of the dialectic of unity and diversity, the aestheticand civilizational features of Islamic art can be more clearly identified;and this, in turn, can aid in the formulation of an Islamic theory ofunity and diversity applicable specifically to Islamic art.

By contrast, Western Orientalist theories have tended to lend undueprominence to just one or two distinctive features or aspects of Islamicart – geometrical figures, for example, or ornamentation. These fea-tures have then been interpreted abstractly, symbolically, historically,or descriptively.

Such Orientalist feature-based theories have sometimes been criti-cized for not being founded on a normative set of criteria or principlessuited to the description of Islamic arts, architecture and crafts as awhole. Instead, most of these theories have been formulated based onanalyses of only one or two forms of Islamic artistic expression, such asarchitecture, drawing, or some other form of pictorial representationin light of what scholars had observed in the Western arts, both religious and secular. This may be why some of these theories have con-tradicted others in terms of how they describe, classify and interpretthe art forms with which they deal and/or the features on which they


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focus. Nevertheless, most of these theories do lend special attention tounity and diversity.

Another difficulty with the Orientalist approach to theorizingabout Islamic art was that those who formulated the theories con-cerned did not give sufficient thought to their theories’ methodologicaland philosophical biases. In other words, they rarely made clear effortsto identify the aesthetic and critical roots of the unity-diversity dialec-tic manifested in Islamic civilization, architecture and art within theIslamic tradition itself.

Unlike the majority of their counterparts, art scholars LouisMassignon (1883-1962) and Alexandre Papadopoulo did seek to linkthe character of Islamic art forms to their Islamic roots. Massignonattempted to explain Islamic geometrical shapes and their artistic formation via the Ash¢arite Atomic Theory, according to which theDivine Will continuously assembles and reassembles the atoms thatmake up everything in existence in order for things to retain their iden-tities over time. According to this theory, atoms can be broughttogether in various ways in order to form a variety of shapes and identi-ties. Unlike the Divine Will, which brings the atoms into existence inthe first place, the artist takes already existing entities and arrangesthem in innovative ways.

As for Papadopoulo, he has sought to present a new, distinctive theory to explain Islamic visual representation as a function of Islamicspiritual and intellectual principles. According to Papadopoulo, theProphetic hadiths that forbade the pictorial representation of livingbeings were a primary cause behind the development of Islamic visualrepresentation in a direction distinct from that of other religious tradi-tions. Specifically, Muslim artists devised creative styles and protocolsthat conformed to the Islamic ban on the visual representation ofhumans and animals, thereby seeking to demonstrate that their inten-tion was not to simulate reality and, in so doing, to vie with the creativeact that is unique to God alone.

In formulating their theories, modern scholars of Islamic art have made little use of Islamic methodologies, such as the ‘roots andbranches’ approach (manhaj al-u|‰l wa al-fur‰¢) that was developed inthe field of Islamic jurisprudence, the occasion method (which involves


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identifying the circumstances that occasioned the emergence of a givenart form), rhetorical methods entailing analysis of the structures of theQur’anic text, and the study of unity and diversity in Islamic art from awholistic, comprehensive perspective that views its distinguishing fea-tures as reflective of a broader, more inclusive pattern or phenomenonthat makes Islamic art what it is.

It has been observed, for example, that Islamic crafts, architectureand arts tend to unite the sacred and the secular, the aesthetic and thepractical, and inward and outward spaces. As an integral phenome-non, Islamic art consists in a set of interdependent arrangements ofsubnetworks. We have geometrical arrangements relating to form andsemantic arrangements relating to content (in Arabic calligraphy, forexample), which together form a single aesthetic and epistemologicalstructure that embodies unity in diversity. A piece of Islamic art willthus be varied from within while, at the same time, possessing an over-all cohesion and a uniform outward appearance.

The Oneness of God and Feature-based UnityA proper critique of the theory of Islamic art requires a thorough famil-iarity with the Islamic doctrine of taw^Ïd, or the oneness of God, notsimply as one distinguishing feature of this art, but as its epistemologi-cal foundation. The doctrine of taw^Ïd has given rise to a set of coreconcepts of relevance to art within three primary contexts: (1) theIslamic religious context founded upon the knowledge and worship ofGod as One, (2) the mystical-philosophical context, which highlightsthe synthesis of oneness and manyness, and (3) the aesthetical-criticalcontext involving the study of Islamic art in light of the principle ofunity and diversity.

As the origin and essence of Islamic knowledge and its unifying spiritthe doctrine of taw^Ïd provides an overarching framework withinwhich to understand how unity and diversity manifest themselves inthe cosmos on all levels. The Islamic view of existence informs the wayMuslims perceive the link between unity on one hand, and the variousforms and levels at which this unity expresses itself on the other. Thisrelationship might appear to be founded on the ‘transcendence-imma-nence’ dialectic so central to monotheism. The objective, abstract


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features of the geometric patterns so prevalent in Islamic art manifestthe Divine Unity by exemplifying the way in which finite, yet repeatedshapes and patterns open onto Infinity – which can only be One innature – thereby symbolizing Absolute Truth. The philosophy oftaw^Ïd places the divine unity at the center of the circle of existence,which includes everything without exception, be it a work of art oranything else. The Divine Unity is reflected in all things existent as in amultifaceted mirror.

This ‘symbolic’ theory of Islamic art views the divine unity as possessing an inward dimension relating to the divine majesty in itssublime perfection, which is the origin of Islamic art, and an outwarddimension relating to the divine beauty, which gives us the various perceptible forms of Islamic art that serve as relative manifestations ofthe Divine Majesty.

Islamic art is set apart from other art forms by a set of interrelated,complementary principles, conditions, and features, including: (1) al-tanzÏh, that is, the exclusion of anthropomorphic elements from theconception of the Deity. (2) Because Islamic art refrains from ascribinghuman qualities to God, be they physical or spiritual, it tends towardal-tajrÏd, that is, abstraction, in intellectual content, style and form. (3)Islamic art allows one to experience the Divine as a symbolic presence(^u\‰r ramzÏ) manifested in a multiplicity of creative forms andimages, or, in the words of the Qur’an, ‘signs’ (¥y¥t). (4) Wisdom (al-^ikmah) is manifested in Islamic art in the orderly arrangements, sizesand proportions of its geometrical figures. (5) Beneficence and charity(al-i^s¥n) are visible in Islamic art through the mastery with which itsworks are executed. (6) Lastly, Islamic art is marked by objectivity (al-maw\‰¢iyyah) rather than by selfishness, subjectivity, and personalism.This may be observed in the fact that, in humility before the one andonly Creator, Muslim artists frequently absent themselves from theirworks by refraining from signing them or leaving any other traces oftheir personal identities.


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3

Divine Oneness as the Principle ofBeauty: Isma¢il R. al Faruqi’s

Theory of Islamic Art

isma¢il r. al faruqi (1921-1986) commended the serious-ness, intelligence and perseverance demonstrated by Western scholarsof Islamic art, noting that the bulk of the reference works on Islamic artin the worlds’ libraries were penned by Western researchers. At thesame time, however, he lamented what he saw as these same scholars’inaccurate appraisals of the true nature of Islamic art. Due to their rigidapplication of Western artistic standards and criteria, these scholarsfailed miserably “to discern the spirit of this art and, hence, to perceiveits authentically Islamic character.”

Al Faruqi thus set out to refute Orientalists’ misconceptions andtendentious, controversial views in the hope of demonstrating the genuine aesthetic and practical features of Islamic art.

Al Faruqi wrote:

It has become apparent to us that virtually all Orientalist scholars of

Islamic art have based their theories on a mistaken – indeed, biased –

hypothesis according to which Islam not only contributed nothing to the

arts in Muslim society over the ages, but actually hindered Muslims’ artistic

progress, restricted their creative output, and impoverished their cultural

heritage. According to this fallacious hypothesis, the only aesthetic addi-

tion attributable to the Muslim community was their mastery of the art of

writing verses of the Qur’an in beautiful Arabic script.

What follows is a listing of some of the leading Orientalist scholarsof Islamic art whose work al Faruqi critiqued in the areas of ornamen-tation, drawing, architecture, literature, music, and art theory.

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• Ernst Herzfeld (1879-1948): Herzfeld was known for his view ofIslamic art as being “anti-naturalist.” The forms of Islamic art whichhe found to be particularly opposed to nature were those that involvedthe use of ornamentation consisting of plant designs. Herzfeld notedthat as opposed to Hellenistic art, which was marked by realistic depic-tions of nature, Islamic art tends toward abstraction, as seen in thestylization of the shapes of leaves and the focus on Arabic calligraphy.Herzfeld saw the abstract nature of Islamic art as a reflection of whathe perceived as ‘religious fanaticism’ on the part of Muslim artists.

• M. S. Dimand (1892-1986) held that “Muhammadan art” wasessentially only ornamental in nature, that is, a type of art that concerns itself with abstract forms more than with the depiction of per-sons, animals and the like. As a result, Dimand saw Islamic art as beinglargely devoid of content.

• Sir Thomas Walker Arnold (1864-1930) was of the view that theprohibition against the visual representation of people in Islamic artcame about in response to Jews who had converted to Islam, whichresulted in a dearth of visual representation in Islamic art and thespread of tawrique, that is, ornamentation in the form of stylizedleaves.

• K. A. Creswell (1879-1965) refused to recognize the existence of‘Islamic architectural art,’ though he did acknowledge the existence ofarchitectural art among Muslims.

• Gustav Von Grunbaum (1909-1972) maintained that Islam hadnever promoted beauty in any active way and that, as a consequence,there is no such thing as an Islamic theory of beauty, be it artistic or literary.

• Henry George Farmer (1882-1965) held the view that Islam isopposed to any form of musical art. According to Farmer, musicspread in the Islamic milieu in spite of the Islamic prohibition against it,since music is something so innate to human beings that it is impossibleto suppress it.

Al Faruqi’s critique of the views propounded by these and otherOrientalists on the subject of Islamic art was based on numerous scien-tific and methodological observations, of which the most notable were:


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First: That Orientalists have developed mistaken, biased, andinconsistent views on the aesthetic and practical nature of Islamic art.Al Faruqi lamented the fact that, as he put it, “none of them [theOrientalist scholars] ever realized that he was judging Islamic art byWestern standards and norms. By doing so, however, these scholarsfailed to see Islamic works of art as expressions of Islamic culture and,instead, indulged in wild speculations that would be an embarrassmentto any self-respecting intellectual.”

Second: That the study and analysis of Western art has its origins inGreek philosophy and modern Western aesthetic concepts. These con-cepts include, for example: (1) realism, that is, the realistic depiction ofobserved reality in works of art; (2) the ‘human measure’ as the basisfor aesthetic evaluation; (3) catharsis as art’s function and principleaim; (4) Divinity and its link to creation, Nature and human beingsfrom the point of view of Jewish and Christian belief, Greek philoso-phy, and contemporary modern scientism, as compared to the Islamicview of human beings, Nature, creativity and art, which is based on theall-encompassing relationship between the Creator of the cosmos andHis creatures, foremost among which are human beings.

Third: That most Western studies of Islamic art have lacked a bal-anced focus. In al Faruqi’s view, most of these studies focused undulyon one aspect or form of Islamic art at the expense of others, which hasin turn yielded inconsistent views among Oriental scholars of Islamicart. Most Western studies have also been historical and taxonomical innature, while Islamic art theory and aesthetic values, central thoughthey are to the proper understanding of Islamic art, continue to be alargely neglected field.

Ettinghausen and the Theory of Islamic Art

According to al Faruqi, Ettinghausen was gifted with a distinctive ability to analyze, and theorize about, the features of Islamic art. At thesame time, however, al Faruqi saw Ettinghausen as having failed tograsp Islamic art’s essential nature. On this point al Faruqi wrote:“Ettinghausen took personalism, evolutionism, realism, and natural-ism as unquestionable ideals against which to measure all art. For this


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reason, he saw Islamic art as falling short of fundamental ideals.” Inthis connection al Faruqi continued, “Ettinghausen insisted on judgingthe Islamic aesthetic sensibility based on considerations for which thissensibility has no concern,” including principles and criteria applicableto Western art theory overall, and Christian art in particular. As a consequence, he misunderstood Islamic artistic consciousness, its epis-temic, intellectual, and cultural foundations, and its creative potential.Ettinghausen’s misunderstanding of Islamic art is illustrated in hisstatement that “the pre-Islamic Arabs were a people who had no placefor art,” since their religion “required no sculpting of beautiful statuesfor the purpose of worship, as a result of which it offered them nopotential for artistic creativity.”

According to Ettinghausen the pre-Islamic Arabs had no visual rep-resentational art forms such as sculpture and drawing. He even went sofar as to suggest that “Islam inherited no aesthetic values from Arablife.” In so saying, Ettinghausen was implying that Islamic art has noArab origins or roots even though it emerged in an Arab environment.

Rather, according to Ettinghausen, Islamic art had arisen “againstthe background of four principles: fear of the Day of Judgment, thehumanity of the Prophet, submission to God Almighty, and the centralimportance of the Qur’an as the manifestation of the eternally pre-served tablet (al-law^ al-ma^f‰·).” In Ettinghausen’s view, these fourprinciples yielded the following outcomes:

1) Opposition between Islam and art “as a manifestation of a life ofluxury.”

2) The shattering of “every possibility of developing icons that depictMuhammad in the ways in which Christ is depicted in the West.”

3) Muslim belief in what Ettinghausen refers to as “the absolute prohibition of the visual representation of persons.” This, in Etting-hausen’s view, is what underlies what he termed the “lack of vitalityand non-naturalism that manifests itself in [Muslim artists’] depic-tion of everything living.” According to Ettinghausen, this prohibi-tion was responsible for what he saw as the “austere monotony” ofIslamic art, its juxtaposition of non-homogeneous colors; its lack ofindividual self-expression; the use of successions of shapes that lack


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a clear beginning or ending and are arranged in an arbitrary mannerthat allows one to reverse or change the position or orientation of apiece of artwork without causing any essential change; and a lack oforganic cohesion among its artistic units.

4) The view of the Qur’an as the earthly manifestation of the HeavenlyBook, which led to the enduring Islamic art form of Arabic calligra-phy. This art form was compared by Ettinghausen and otherOrientalists to the “stations of the cross” associated with the life ofChrist. Al Faruqi’s criticism of Ettinghausen’s views on the featuresof Islamic art formed part of a broader critique of Orientalists’inadequate and distorted conceptualizations of this art. However,al Faruqi’s critique went beyond being a direct response to thesemistaken views and conceptualizations to include a broader exposi-tion of what he termed, “an Islamic epistemological opening ontothe science of beauty” and, as its outgrowth, the Islamic science ofart and aesthetic theory.

Establishing the Origins of the Theory of Islamic Art

Al Faruqi based his endeavour to establish the origins of the theory ofIslamic art on a reformist vision and on particular insights into modernOrientalists’ approach to Islamic art in Western and Islamic culturesalike. Seen from the Orientalist perspective, Islamic art is sometimes inconflict with Islam and, as such, constitutes a departure from its teach-ings that has been relegated to a marginal position on the humanartistic scene at large. Al Faruqi’s aim was to address this situation byexploring the true nature of this art and seeking to demonstrate itsauthentic rootedness in Islam.

This endeavour on al Faruqi’s part touches on a number of areas:(1) the intellectual structure of the theory of Islamic art (founded on theQur’anic doctrine of taw^Ïd, or the oneness of the Divine), (2) the actualpractice of art (founded on the uniquely Islamic stylization of shapesand patterns), and (3) epistemology (based on a distinctive network ofart forms associated with Islam and Muslims rather than with the Westand Westerners).


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Al Faruqi clarified his approach further by saying:

An acceptable theory of Islamic art is one whose founding assumptions arerooted in elements that emerge from within the [Islamic] religion and[Islamic] culture, not from givens or assumptions imposed on them by analien [philosophical, aesthetic and artistic] tradition. Similarly, it is one thatdepends not on weak or marginal elements of this culture, but on its mostcentral and powerful components. In light of requirements such as these,the Qur’an provides aesthetic creativity with an important, logical andready-made source. Indeed, the Qur’an has had as much of an impact onthe arts as it has on other manifestations and expressions of Islamic culture.

Islamic culture is, in essence, a ‘Qur’anic culture,’ since its defini-tions, structures, aims, and means of achieving such aims all issue fromthe revelation that God bestowed on His Prophet Muhammad in theseventh century ah. What the Muslim derives from Islam’s holy bookis not simply the knowledge of ‘Absolute Reality,’ but, equally deci-sively, notions about the world of nature and human beings, as well asthe social and political institutions needed for the sound managementof society. In short, the Qur’an provides us with input on every knownbranch of knowledge and activity, including that of beauty and art.

Therefore, “Just as it is valid to see these manifestations of Islamicculture as Qur’anic in nature with respect to their foundation, motiva-tion and aim, so also must the arts that have grown out of Islamiccivilization be looked upon as aesthetic expressions that emerge fromthe same [Qur’anic] source and follow the same [Qur’anic] path.Indeed, the Islamic arts are Qur’anic arts par excellence.”

The Qur’an: The Masterpiece of Islamic Art

Al Faruqi is to be commended for his view of the Qur’an as the first andsublimest expression of Islamic art. As he stated, “the Holy Qur’an istruly art...in fact, there is nothing in existence to which this descriptioncould more rightly be applied.”

Rhetoricians have drawn attention to the artistic features of theQur’an as seen, for example, in what has been termed the Qur’an’s“rhetorical miraculousness.” This being the case, al Faruqi found the


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Qur’an to be “the first and most refined example of artistic expres-sion,” describing it as “the first work of art in Islam.”

It is noteworthy that al Faruqi not only viewed the Qur’an as theprimary source of Islamic aesthetic thought. He also viewed it, as wehave seen, as the first and foremost Islamic work of art. As such, it hascontinued to exert a major aesthetic impact on every Muslim. As alFaruqi puts it, “There is not a Muslim in the world who has not beenmoved to his or her very depths by the Qur’an’s rhythm, composition,and eloquence. There is not a Muslim on earth whose inner being hasnot been stamped with the beauty of the Qur’an, and reshaped after itspattern.”


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A page fromthe Qur’an


Based on the foregoing, the Qur’an is to be seen as “the exemplarfor all manifestations of Islamic art” on the levels of both ideas and aes-thetics. In fact, it becomes the foundation for most of the Islamic arts,particularly that of Arabic calligraphy, which, given its powerful bondwith the Qur’an, is “a refined art conducive to an awareness of thetranscendent” in the form of physical beauty. As such, the Qur’an is theform of Islamic art that gives clearest expression to a “sense of tran-scendent divine reality.”

On the Concept and Epistemic Theory of Islamic Art

Al Faruqi approaches the definition of Islamic art via two principle disciplines: (1) the science of maq¥|id, that is, the study of the higherintents and purposes of Islamic law, and (2) the science of jam¥l, or aesthetics. Al Faruqi discusses certain scholars’ juristic adaptation ofmaq¥|id based on the notion that art is “a form of worldly enjoymentand a means of adornment.” He then takes us beyond this conceptionof art to that of a craft whose productions “inspire aesthetic reflection,provide psychological enjoyment, and support the society’s basicstructure and way of thinking by serving as a reminder of its foundingprinciples.”

In this way, al Faruqi transcends the religious realm in general, andthe juristic realm in particular, in the context of which art is only dis-cussed in terms of whether it is permissible or impermissible, withoutan attempt to discern art’s role as a conduit of knowledge and beautyand, as a consequence, people’s need for it and its social function. Artfunctions within a space that is shared in common by aesthetics andreligion, each of which occupies an essential place in the realm ofhuman knowledge.

Al Faruqi defines Islamic art as “a structural entity that is consistentwith the aesthetic principles of Islamic thought.” Foremost amongthese aesthetic principles is that of taw^Ïd, which he views as the start-ing point and origin of beauty. As such, taw^Ïd lies at the centre of thetheory of Islamic art, being the common denominator that unites allartists everywhere whose point of reference is the universal Islamicvision of the world.


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A broad and expansive concept, the doctrine of taw^id encompassesall levels of existence, from the Divine Transcendent to the concretedetails of a given work of art. Al Faruqi integrates these graded levels ofexistence into what he terms “transcendence in beauty.” In al Faruqi’sunderstanding, the universe in which we live is the epistemic realm ofwhat he terms “the aesthetic experience,” which he defines as “therealization, via the data of reason, of the existence of a primary, meta-physical essence that transcends everything in Nature and whichfunctions as the normative principle that determines what any givenentity is. The closer a visible entity is to this Essence, the more beautifulit will be.”

This ‘aesthetic experience’ is what causes art to be “a process ofexploring the metaphysical essence within Nature...Art is a process of‘reading’ nature in search of a supernatural essence, and giving thisessence a visible form appropriate to it...Art is by necessity an intuitivesense of Nature in search of something that is not a part of Nature – insearch, that is, of the Transcendent.” This ‘Transcendent’ is theExalted Being who cannot be perceived by sight or sense – “No humanvision can encompass Him, whereas He encompasses all humanvision” (S‰rah al-An¢¥m, 6:103), and, “there is nothing like unto Him”(S‰rah al-Sh‰r¥, 42:11). “This Ultimate cannot be described adequatelyby any verbal description; nor can it be represented by any image fromthe world of human beings or any other realm of Nature...This notionof the Divine’s absolute unicity and sublimity is what is known astaw^Ïd.”

A critical examination of the foregoing suggests that taw^Ïd is:

1) A principle underlying the Islamic concept of art as opposed to theWestern concept, which views art as a kind of “naive, photographicsimulation of Nature, or, rather, an attempt to represent a precon-ceived idea in sensory form; and partial, momentary expressions ofideas of Nature and human beings as Nature’s highest, most com-plex manifestations. Hence, this [Western] theory of art viewshuman beings as the ‘measure of all things.’”

2) A distinguishing feature of Islamic aesthetics and Islamic art as “theart of the infinite.” The endlessly repeated patterns employed in


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Islamic art generate a sense of sublimity, of that which transcendsplace and time, yet without claiming that the patterns themselvesembody what transcends them. By reflecting on these infinitelyrepeated patterns, the viewer’s thoughts are drawn toward God, “Apattern that has no beginning or end (whether perceived or imag-ined) creates an impression of infinity...and is, therefore, the bestway to give artistic expression to the principle of taw^Ïd.” This isthe primary message and mission of Islamic art – to be a constantreminder of the unicity of God Almighty.

3) “The unassailable truth revealed in the unified aim and purpose ofall Islamic art, and this despite the tremendous variety evident in itssubject matter, materials, and artistic styles by virtue of differinggeography and historical period.” Time and place were, in fact, thetwo variables that left the greatest impact on Orientalists’ supposi-tions regarding the degree to which Islamic art was authentic, orborrowed from Sassanid, Byzantine, Jewish and Christian sources.

On the Nature of Islamic Art and itsEpistemological Foundations

Al Faruqi stressed the distinction between the terms ‘reality’ (^aqÏqah)and ‘nature’ (~abÏ¢ah) with respect to what makes Islamic art ‘Islamic.’In this context he contrasted Islamic art with both ‘the religious arts’such as Jewish and Christian art, and ‘the symbolic arts,’ such asByzantine and Hindu art. ‘The religious arts’ concern themselves withGod, the Creator of all, of Whom all people have some innate concep-tion. This conception is free of all anthropomorphisms and personifi-cation, shape or form. In other words, it is an abstract notion of thesacred Reality or Truth which transcends ‘Nature’ as embodied in created entities that can be grasped via human reason and sensorycapacities.

However, al Faruqi distinguishes two types of ‘Nature.’ One ofthese he terms ‘imprinting Nature’ (al-~abÏ¢ah al-~¥bi¢ah), which lendsan entity its individual identity, thereby making it what it is, while thesecond, which he terms ‘imprinted Nature’ (al-~abÏ¢ah al-ma~b‰¢ah), is


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the reality of the entity once its nature has been determined. The‘imprinting nature’ is perceived via intuition, while the ‘imprintednature’ is perceived via the senses. The first is a dynamic entity that can-not be delimited or measured, while the second is static, and can bedelimited and measured.

The relationship between these two concepts forms the backgroundfor al Faruqi’s analysis of religious and symbolic artwork in Judaismand Christianity and in the pre-Islamic Greek and Roman cultures. Heconcludes on the basis of this analysis that these religions and cultures“tended so to minimize the aesthetic value of art that it became nothingbut a logical representation that virtually anyone would be capable ofproducing,” as, for example, in the Christian world, where abstractionin art is viewed not as something abstracted or stripped away fromNature but, rather, simply as an alternative way of depicting Nature,while Formalism is understood simply as a suggestion of the artist’sexperiential state.

Christian artwork in the form of iconography, for example, is anincarnational, personal, functional work that symbolically combinesthe natural and the sacred, particularly in religious rites, whereasJewish artwork of a similar type is nearly absent due to Judaism’sresistance to the notion of representing the Divine Reality in any natu-ral form.

There is clearly an extreme contrast between the Jewish andChristian approaches to beauty, with the Jewish perspective rejectingany admixture of the sensory and the spiritual in the form of artwork,and with the Christian approach to artwork involving an exaggeratedmelding of the natural with sacred truth. A similar admixture of thenatural and sacred reality is found in Greek artwork, whose startingpoint is Greek mythology expressed through the arts of poetry, drama,sculpture, illustration, and others. In the Greeks’ view, the love andexperience of beauty depend on the symbolic representation of meta-physical realities, as exemplified in what the Greeks termed deification(al-ta’alluh), a human being manifested in the form of a deity as ameans of presenting an ideal exemplar of that human nature. This isconsistent with the belief that the basic function of such symbolic art isto bring about purification from sin and guilt.


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However, the question that arises here is: Was Islamic art influ-enced by earlier approaches, or did it emerge and take form out of itsown unique perspective? The answer to this pivotal question, in alFaruqi’s view, can be found in what he termed “stylization,” whichconsists in representing natural entities in a non-naturalistic manner inorder to draw viewers’ attention to the fact that “what is Natural is notequivalent to what is Real.” This, in al Faruqi’s view, is a “sublime”manner of artistic expression that strips the subject of its minute detailsand transmutes it into a form that bears no realistic resemblance to itsappearance in Nature. Hence, in contrast to the Western artistic idealof simulation or imitation, we find that “at the hand of the high-mindedartist, shapes become nothing but artistic means of ornamentationrather than expressions of their own nature.”

Muslim artists have produced a new art form consistent with theirmonotheistic vision, which is founded upon the premises that “there isno deity but Allah,” and that there is nothing in Nature by means ofwhich we could convey God’s essence or depict the Divine “in a sym-bolic manner that relies on the simulation of Nature.” Based on this, alFaruqi identifies the following features of Islamic art:

1) Stylization. Every image drawn from Nature is presented in a stylized form. In other words, so much distance is placed betweenthe artist’s subject and its natural characteristics that it is nearlyunrecognizable.

2) Anti-symbolism. Muslim artists reject symbolism as their point ofdeparture. Al Faruqi viewed this rejection of symbolism as Islamicart’s “supreme badge of distinction.” Muslims take pride in the factthat their art is devoid of any pagan or idolatrous spirit and that, asa consequence, it avoids all danger of confusing the Creator withthe creation.

Given the foregoing, Islamic art has incorporated some art formsbut not others based on the world view that serves as its guiding princi-ple. It excludes, for example, sculpture, drama and, to some extent,drawing and painting, while including: (a) auditory arts involving language and literature such as, for example, poetry and Qur’anic


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recitation; and (b) visual arts such as geometrical designs and patterns,calligraphy, ornamentation, etc.

On the Foundations of Islamic Art

Al Faruqi based his theory of Islamic art on two foundations, one spiri-tual, and the other historical. The spiritual foundation consists in theIslamic principle of monotheism. The affirmation that “there is no deitybut Allah” points to the existence of only two realms of reality. Thefirst is that of the Creator, to whom no human or creaturely attributescan properly be ascribed, and the second is that of the creation, includ-ing the world of Nature as a whole, and that of human beings inparticular. This monotheistic foundation has guided Islamic visual art,which, in a notable contrast to artistic Naturalism, stylizes its subjectsin the manner described above based on the notion that there is nothingin the created realm, and particularly in human beings, that might beviewed as a symbol, instrument, suggestion, expression, embodiment,emanation or derivation of the Sacred Essence. For this reason, Islamexcludes any form of personal representation in art.

As for Islamic art’s historical foundation, it is seen in what al Faruqiterms ‘the Arab mindset’ that colored the historical environment inwhich the divine revelation emerged and took form. Similarly, it wasthe ‘Arab mindset’ as embodied in the person of the ProphetMuhammad that served as the conduit for the divine revelation thatwas to be delivered to people in all times and places. Al Faruqi viewedthe Arabic language, with its clear, logical, geometrically precise struc-tures, as the source of Arabic poetry’s musicality. It was these charac-teristics of the Arabic language which, in al Faruqi’s view, caused Arabsto perceive in Islamic art a dimension of “infinitude” not found inother art forms to which reference has been made.

The Distinguishing Features of Islamic Art

The principle features of Islamic art to which al Faruqi devoted atten-tion were abstractionism, monotheism, and kineticism. The abstrac-tionism that marks Islamic art can be perceived in the endlessly repeated


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geometric patterns that mark much of Islamic ornamentation; whilstmonotheism is visible in the way in which a given work of art will con-sist of numerous units that function harmoniously to form a larger,unified design or structure. And as for kineticism, it manifests itself inthe design of a piece of art in such a way that the work’s spatial andtemporal dimensions are gathered into a pattern of shapes and soundsthat lend the viewer or listener a sense of dynamic progression.


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4

The Communicative Aspect of

Islamic Art: Theory and Application

this chapter explores the features that enable Islamicart to function as a universal language shared by individuals, peoples,cultures and civilizations worldwide.

The discussion will not be based on the currently prevalent theoryof communication which, being Western par excellence, has almostentirely to do with media and information, but, rather, on a more general, universal theory of human knowledge that encompasseseverything from philosophy to art.

Our aim here is to explore the communicative aspect of Islamic artas it relates to what we might term ‘Islamic communicative culture’ andits application to images in general, and more specifically, to thoseemployed in the art of Arabic calligraphy.

The importance of this topic emerges in light of the need for knowl-edge and expertise in the modern world. This need is manifested in theburgeoning communications industry, whether the communicationsinvolved are written or spoken, including the field of advertising andthe media, graphics design and the like. Islamic art as a whole, andArabic calligraphy in particular, holds potential for assimilation intocommunications programs of various types. As a matter of fact, Arabiccalligraphy is now one of the fundamental components of communica-tive design and the visual arts, the typographical arts in particular.

In this context there has arisen a new art form that might be termed‘typographical calligraphy’ in response to growing interest in the studyof the geometric and typographical features of Arabic script.

Unfortunately, however, we have few systematic, thorough studiesof the communicative aspect of Islamic art.

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On the Culture of Communication

[one]: the concept of communication

The Arabic word for ‘communication’ (taw¥|ul) is derived from theverbal root wa|ala, meaning to connect or unify one thing with another.Communication is a widely shared and recognized concept on the levelsof both culture and civilization, connecting individual members of asingle community or society and the diverse peoples of the world. Thecommunication of ideas among individuals, communities, societies,cultures and civilizations takes place through intellectual schools andmovements based on interactive, dialogic, revivalist, progressive, andmodernist theories whose emergence and development have been triggered by historical contexts and events. The processes of emergenceand development grow out of an ongoing dynamic of separation (fa|l)and union (wa|l), where ‘separation’ refers to what happens when enti-ties and ideas change and break, to whatever degree, with the past,while ‘union’ refers to the value and vitality of entities, ideas, individu-als and communities that endure across boundaries of time and place.

The relationship between separation and union on the levels of boththeory and application is best understood based on the notions ofinteraction and complementarity, as Arab culture often makes so littledistinction between them that every area of Arab-Islamic life may besaid to have its own theory of separation and union with its own set ofapplications in the realm of human knowledge. Realizing the difficultyof severing the connection between the twin phenomena of separationand union on either the theoretical or the practical level, Arab culturehas most often viewed them simply as a duality to which we refer as‘communication’ (taw¥|ul).

The term ‘communication’ might thus be understood to refer to anexchange of knowledge that can occur in any and all human culturesand civilizations. The concept of communication is embodied in thedynamic relationship between the two poles of a duality, some ofwhich are similar, and others dissimilar such as, for example, essenceand identity, content and form, pattern and style, essence and accident,companionship and dialogue, family ties based on blood and those


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based on marriage, pairing and interaction, ideas and conceptions, andother concepts that might fall under the same rubric.

[two]: theoretical horizons of communication

Human beings possess a deeply ingrained, God-given propensity toseek out and impart knowledge which has long been the subject ofinquiry, theorization and application in the realms of religion, philoso-phy and science. Within Islamic contexts, the pursuit of knowledge hasbeen imbued with a sense of worshipful reverence and purpose. It isspoken of obliquely in S‰rah al-A¢r¥f, 7:172, where we read that“When thy Lord drew forth from the Children of Adam – from theirloins – their descendants, and made them testify concerning them-selves, (saying): ‘Am I not your Lord (who cherishes and sustainsyou)?’ –They said: ‘Yea! We do testify!’ (This), lest ye should say on theDay of Judgment: ‘Of this we were never mindful’.” This same propen-sity is present on the social plane, where we observe that in order tothrive, people need a network of social relationships governed byshared rules and traditions that serve as the basis for meaningful communication.

Nonetheless, there remains ambiguity relating to whether commu-nication is to be construed from an experiential, intuitive perspective,or in terms of precisely defined phenomena, concepts, and methods.The ambiguity associated with the concept and function of communi-cation has been addressed via a number of theories which lendcommunication a kind of generalized cultural identity that places norestrictions to speak of on people’s way of thinking and expressingthemselves, their relationships, or other aspects of their private andpublic lives.

The linguistic theory, as its name implies, construes communica-tion as linked to language and its capacity to convey ideas andinformation. According to this theory, every act of communicationmust be related to the rules of language, be they fixed or variable, thatgovern the relationships among the functions of linguistic exchange,identified by Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) as sender, receiver, mes-sage, context, channel, and code.


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However, the linguistic theory views human language as only oneof a variety of symbolic communication systems, some verbal, othersnon-verbal. Philosophical developments in this theory, which trans-formed the concept of language from that of a direct functional tool tothat of a sign that points – whether directly or indirectly, with or with-out words – to intended meanings and intentions, led to the possibilityof dividing communication into two main types: linguistic (verbal),and non-linguistic (non-verbal).

This division prepared the way for the process by which general linguistics branched into a number of different linguistic sciences andcritical disciplines such as, for example, semiotics and the aesthetics ofliterature and art, which concern themselves with cultural phenomenaon the level of both individuals and societies. As a consequence, theconcept of communication shifted from that of a process to that of anepistemological field that could better be described within the frame-work of culture than it could merely in linguistic terms. The notion ofcommunication now went beyond a neutral exchange between partiesto include an effective, dynamic relationship based on elements at oncelinguistic and cultural, and encompassing a range of communicativeconcepts and tools, including reading, writing, text, context, sign, anddiscourse, all of which go to make up the epistemological content ofcommunication.

At the same time, the concept of communication came to be associ-ated with various types of metaphorical and cultural expression, suchas clothing, behavior, and other non-verbal cues and signs, specializedterminology or jargon (‘shop talk’) that developed among members ofparticular occupations or specializations such as computers, televi-sion, or other types of electronics and technology, sign language for thedeaf, and other channels of communication. Evolution in fields such asthese provided an environment that nurtured the development of thetheory of communication and its audiovisual applications. In this wayit became possible to bridge the distance between medium and messagein keeping with the theory propounded by Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), and to transform the world into a global communicationsvillage whose entire population has a part in everything. This transfor-mation is possible thanks to the tremendous technological and digital


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developments that have been witnessed in the field of communicationswith its ever-diversifying media, from traditional paper publications,both handwritten and printed, to electronic media and the variousmeans used in message manufacturing, including editing, design, pro-duction, publication and distribution, to mention a few.

[three]: communicatology

The epistemic shifts that occurred in relation to communication led tothe emergence of linguistic theories, media-related theories, and philo-sophical theories that affirmed the vital link between communication,on one hand, and on the other hand, cultural evolution and expressionon the levels of individuals and societies.

Out of the aforementioned developments in the concept of commu-nication were technical and functional theories that focused onmechanisms, modalities, aims, and purposes of communication asrevealed in structures, essences, identities, features, behaviors and thelike. Further shifts also led to attempts to reconstruct the entire conceptof communication and to classify it epistemologically in terms of thescience of communication, or Communicatology.

The field of Communicatology derives its input, both theoreticaland practical, from previous communication theories. Its subject matter might be summed up in the answers to a set of pivotal questions:Why do we communicate (functional theory)? About what do we com-municate (epistemological theory)? When and where do we communi-cate (social theory)? How do we communicate (technical theory)?What we have as a result is a network of communicative theories basedon the input provided by human exchanges in both the world of ideas,information, meanings, and purely theoretical values, and that of concrete objects, actions, traditions, and forms.

[four]: general and specific theories of communication

These and other theoretical components which, whether societally orindividually, make up the epistemological foundation of the science ofcommunication, or Communicatology, may enable us to conceptual-ize communication from one of two different perspectives:


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(a) the general theory of communication, which envisions all types ofcommunication as being, in essence, a compound of inbornhuman traits and social needs, behaviors that develop in responseto encounter, interaction, exchange and acculturation via ashared discourse.

(b) the specific theory of communication, which views communica-tion based on its type or field, and which concerns itself withacademic research into the connections between communicationand the sciences, the humanities, and the arts and their varioussubspecializations.

In its general function, communication is the cultural tie that bindsand harmonizes the social and economic aspects of knowledge on onehand, and on the other hand, the aesthetics aspects of knowledge, thatis, knowledge as it relates to performance, expression, and the effectiveconveyance of ideas and emotions via artistic and creative channels.

[five]: communication design

When viewed from an artistic technical perspective, Communicatol-ogy will be seen to be similar to culture, where ‘culture’ encompasses atonce medium, message, relationship, technique, and style. Therefore,Communicatology is based not only on a linguistic system (in the senseof spoken and written words) for the achievement of communicationbut, in addition, on an integrated epistemological system or network ofsymbols that are varied in type, meaning, and cultural associations.The specific culture concerned – particularly its creative experiments inliterature and art as the two areas that lend the greatest aesthetic atten-tion to forms of expression – thus constitutes the epistemologicalmatrix for Communicatology, also known today as communicationdesign.

The Islamic Culture of Communication

[one]: the islamic concept of communication

As the primary source of Islamic knowledge and values, the Qur’an


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presents what might be termed an ‘Islamic culture of communication’based on the principle of mutual acquaintance (al-ta¢¥ruf). In S‰rah al-¤ujur¥t, 49:13, God declares, “O men! Behold, We have created youall out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations andtribes, so that you might come to know one another (li ta¢¥raf‰).Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is mostdeeply conscious of Him. Behold, God is All-Knowing, All-Aware.”The Arabic term al-ta¢¥ruf relates to both knowledge that is acquiredthrough effort and study (al-ma¢rifah), and that which is acquiredthrough personal experience (al-¢irf¥n), that is to say, the comprehen-sion or realization of something through reflection on its effects. In theIslamic worldview, people are meant to communicate amongst them-selves on the basis of both moral and aesthetic principles. Moralprinciples are reflected in the responsibility to communicate dictated inthe Qur’anic command, “And never concern thyself with anything ofwhich thou hast no knowledge: verily, [thy] hearing and sight andheart - all of them - will be called to account for it [on Judgment Day]!”(S‰rah al-Isr¥’, 17:36). As for aesthetic principles, they are seen in thedescription of the ideal style of communication found in S‰rah al-Na^l, 16:125, where God says, “Call thou [all mankind] unto yourSustainer’s path with wisdom and goodly exhortation, and argue withthem in the most kindly manner - for, behold, your Sustainer knowsbest as to who strays from His path, and best knows He as to who arethe right-guided.”

[two]: islamic communicatology

The discipline that provides the best epistemological and methodologi-cal framework for the Islamic culture of communication is the scienceof rhetoric (¢ilm al-bay¥n), which deals with every type of sign that con-veys meaning and, in this way, enables people to understand eachother. The definition of the word bay¥n is derived from the verb b¥na/yabÏnu,meaning to be or become clear.

Of course, the act of clarification referred to as bay¥n goes beyondlanguage in the ordinary sense of the word to encompass a system com-prised of both language and all media that provide clarity and


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understanding, whether through speech, text, signals, or the form inwhich an entity appears. In this connection, al-J¥^i· (d. 255 ah/868ce) noted that, “the divisions of rhetoric include all entities that com-municate meaning, be they verbal or non-verbal. These entities fallunder five divisions: (1) spoken language (al-laf·), (2) sign (ish¥rah),(3) numerical hand signals (al-¢aqd), (4) script (kha~~), and (5) bodylanguage (al-ni|bah).”

The “divisions of rhetoric” (aqs¥m al-bay¥n) to which al-J¥^i·referred evolved into a linguistic science based on comparison and con-trast involving an artistic critique that concerns itself with beauty ofexpression, precision of signification, and effective, ongoing commu-nication through the use of artistic styles, both linguistic and non-linguistic, which explain and clarify meaning. These five divisionsmake it possible to classify the various fields of communication withinIslamic culture into: (a) linguistic communication via the spoken word(al-laf·), and (b) cultural communication via signs (ish¥r¥t), numericalhand signals (al-¢aqd), script (kha~~), and body language (al-ni|bah).

However, the instrument by means of which people convey andreceive meaning finds its focal point in mental images.

[three]: the communicative concept of ‘image’ (ß‰rah)

The concept of ‘image’ (|‰rah) within the Islamic culture of communi-cation encompasses both accident and essence, form and content. Assuch, it includes “every form or appearance that would be consistentwith the essence.” In keeping with this concept, “the image of a thing isa reflection of its abstract nature and its shadow in the mind.” Everybody possesses an image which symbolizes it, points to it, signifies it, orexpresses it in the processes of clarification and communication on avariety of levels, from that of knowledge, society, behaviour, and thelike.

An image is a measure and representation of what we know in ourminds through what we see with our eyes. When we see the differencesamong individual members of a species or category, these differencesexist on the level of image, not on the level of essence or inner nature.

As understood Islamically, the image appears to be message andmedium at once with respect to the identification of entities and things,


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expression of feelings and ideas, performance of actions and move-ments, description of forms, and other processes which show the imageto be the heart of Islamic communicative culture, a heart pulsating withmeaning and intention, understanding and the ability to convey under-standing, awareness and clarity, contact and communication, becauseexisting entities are by nature susceptible of being represented or sym-bolized through images. Meanings do not appear to be of aesthetic orartistic value in and of themselves; rather, their aesthetic or artisticvalue lies in their transformation into images through the use of imagi-nation, which shifts them from the realm of reason and logic to that ofphysical sensation in the form of concrete means of communication.

[four]: the islamic theory of illustration

In the Islamic culture of communication, the image might be likened tothe primary material that goes to make up existence, knowledge, andinteraction. The universe itself is an image that points to its purpose, itstrue nature, and its Source, Who is “God, the Creator, the Maker whoshapes all forms and appearances! His [alone] are the attributes of per-fection. All that is in the heavens and on earth extols His limitless glory:for He alone is Almighty, truly Wise!” (S‰rah al-¤ashr, 59:24). Imagesmight thus be said to be the source of linguistic, philosophical, and reli-gious awareness of everything that exists, since everything in existencehas an image by which its nature is known.

It is the image by means of which communication takes place;hence, an image is comparable to a meaning, a concept, a topic, or ameans of revealing things’ true nature and significance. The Islamictheory of illustration is based on the tiered nature of epistemic commu-nication, on both the level of abstract conception and that of sensoryperception, in relation to everything in existence, from the inner reachesof the human soul to the outer reaches of space beyond. This communi-cation takes place via the multiple and varied images that belong bynature to the tiered levels of creation: the realm of visible entities, men-tal entities, ideas, and forms. There are four levels of existence: writing,verbal expression, entities of the mind, and the essences of things.Among these four levels, the earlier serves as a means of indicating the


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later. Written words, for example, point to spoken words, which pointto entities in the mind, which point in turn to essences. It should beremembered, of course, that essences represent the truest, mostauthentic level of existence.

The process of signifying these things, communicating with them,and communicating through them in keeping with their various levelsof existence takes place via images. Everything in the world of essencespossesses existence outside the mind. When such a thing is perceived, acorresponding mental image is formed. If the mental image to whichthis perception gave rise is expressed verbally, the words used in thisact of expression cause the hearers to form a similar image in their ownminds. Consequently, the meaning comes to have another existencerelating to the signification of the words in the mind of the person whohears them (the world of ideas, meanings, and verbal expression).Letters written on a page form words, whose meanings then take theform of images in the reader’s mind. As a result, the written letters alsohave existence relating to the way in which they signify words, which inturn signify the entity perceived (the world of forms: writing, script).

The Islamic culture of communication appears to have given hand-written script (al-kha~~) particular importance due to its distinctivecapacity to convey meaning. Like spoken words, written words canconvey meaning in a present, direct manner; unlike spoken words,however, written speech can also convey meanings in an absent, indi-rect manner; in other words, it can convey meaning to those who werenot present when the words were uttered. Therefore, written script ismore beneficial than spoken words.

The fundamental reason for all of this is that handwritten script is ‘abody with an image,’ its ‘body’ consisting of geometrical figures, somerounded, some angular. The Islamic culture of communication hasdeveloped its own general philosophical theory of the image based onunity and diversity in nature, and function and design in numerousepistemological fields. The image is thus an important topic of inquiryin the science of optics, which concerns itself with the physical processesinvolved in sight and the functions performed by the eye. Similarly, theimage is an important topic of inquiry in the ‘science of drawing’ (¢ilmal-rasm), which concerns itself with the creation of forms and the


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manufacture of images. From an epistemological point of view, ¢ilm al-rasm is based on the use of geometric shapes in design. This geometryboth serves as the origin and the determiner of the design. As for draw-ing, it involves forming the letters as beautifully as possible by observ-ing the proper proportions between one letter and the next.

Still another area relevant to images is Aesthetics (¢ilm al-jam¥l),which critically evaluates an artistic image’s creativity and commu-nicative function. The principle of ideal image design termed ‘beautifulformation’ (^usn al-taqwÏm), inspired by God’s declaration, “Verily,We create man in the best conformation (fÏ a^sani taqwÏm)” (S‰rah al-TÏn, 95:4), is the epistemological nerve of ‘the science of drawing’ whichmight also be termed ‘the science of Islamic communication design’(¢ilm al-ta|mÏm al-taw¥|ulÏ al-isl¥mÏ) and its theory of illustration.

[five]: the unity and diversity of the image

The ‘science of drawing,’ likened above to the ‘science of Islamic com-munication design,’ works on producing images suited to a variety ofepistemological fields. In the field of literature, for example, poetry hasbeen described as a kind of illustration; in the field of Astronomy, wehave books containing illustrations of the planets and other heavenlybodies, while Geography has yielded maps of various types.

Based on the foregoing it will be observed that such images, variedas they are in shape, form, meaning and function, belong epistemologi-cally to numerous sciences, fields of study and arts. Hence, an imagemight be:

(a) An instrument or tool for clarification and communication, as itis, for example, in language, prose writing, poetry, logic, andother domains.

(b) An idea, a topic, or a message relating to epistemological clarifi-cation or communication, as, for example, in the fields of Physics,Optics and Engineering.

(c) At once a message and a creative medium, as in Architecture andthe arts.


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In the Islamic culture of communication, images and their episte-mological types – scientific, literary, artistic – can be divided into avariety of categories, types, and levels. Of note in this context is thatAb‰ ¤ayy¥n al-Taw^ÏdÏ (d. 413 ah/1023 ce) mentions more than fifteen types of images, including, for example, ‘the divine image,’which is manifested in unity, established in perpetuity, and ever-existent. The lowest ranking type of image, in terms of both existenceand knowledge, is that of the calligraphic image (al-|‰rah al-kha~~iyah).

[six]: the general and specific theory of illustration

The explanatory and communicative concepts of the image and itsnumerous epistemological varieties make up the ‘stuff’ of a general theory that applies to all areas of Islamic Arabic knowledge, as well asto human knowledge overall. The premise for such a theory is that inboth the Islamic and the overall human cultures of communication, theimage is not only a tool of clarification, but is at once medium and message.

In light of this general theory of illustration, we can identify numer-ous special theories in the epistemological fields (the sciences, thehumanities, the arts) in which images operate. Among these fields wefind a vast array of images of countless types, forms and functions:


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The calligraphic image


some cerebral, abstract and fantastical, others realistic and concrete,and all of them subject to classification based on the functions they per-form toward clarification and communication.

The basic images in the Islamic intellectual tradition can be classi-fied into the following four categories: linguistic, calligraphic, dynamicor figurative, and illustrative. The linguistic image is represented by,for example, forms of writing that employ words and meanings such aspoetry, prose and other literary genres. The calligraphic image is repre-sented by the artistic figures created via calligraphic writing. Thedynamic or figurative image is represented by drawings of objects, phe-nomena, actions, events, stories, and other types of drawing such as,for example, al-W¥si~Ï’s illustrations of the Maq¥m¥t of al-¤arÏrÏ. And

as for illustrative images, they arerepresented by abstract drawingsthat convey scientific informationor facts in the fields of engineering,medicine, botany, zoology, geolo-gy, geography, astronomy, andthe like.

Epistemologically speaking,however, all these types of imagescan be classed into one of twogroups: (1) cerebral, rational, andabstract, or (2) realistic, concrete,and visible to the eye. In theircapacity as tools for naming anddescribing things and for identify-ing whatever entity is capable of

being perceived, imagined, heard or seen, these images provide a basisfor classifying communicative knowledge into a number of more pre-cise categories or specializations, whose subject matter, cognitivetradition, or cultural distinguishing feature is determined by the rele-vant visual, mental, or dynamic/figurative image.

Of these areas or specializations, the most prominent are literarycommunication and artistic communication.


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The illustrative image


The Calligraphic Image as an Example of the Communicative Aspect of Islamic Art

[one]: the concept of the ‘calligraphic image’

Viewed from the Arabic-Islamic perspective, a distinction is drawnbetween writing (kit¥bah) and script (kha~~), where kit¥bah is a com-prehensive concept that includes everything that falls within theframework of language, literature and art. Kit¥bahmight be composi-tional in nature, in which case it would take the form of prose works infields such as literature, history, philosophy and the like; alternatively,it might take the form of handwritten script (kha~~), in which case itwould manifest as images and shapes.

Viewed from the Arabic-Islamic epistemological perspective,kit¥bah is the linguistic origin of kha~~. As such, kit¥bah is broader andmore inclusive than kha~~.

Kha~~ “might serve as an illustration or inscription” for writing(kit¥bah). Consequently, linguists, prosodists and critics view kha~~ as‘the image of writing’ (|‰rat al-kit¥bah), ‘the image of the spokenword’ (|‰rat al-laf·), and ‘the image of meaning’ (|‰rat al-ma¢n¥).

At the same time, a distinction can be drawn between two levels ofkha~~. The first level, which has to do with artistic, linguistic andsemantic function, is based on kha~~’s being an act of writing thatinvolves “forming letters, clothing them in the garb of detail, and plac-ing them in the most beautiful of settings.” As for the second level, it isbased on the notion of kha~~ as nothing but an image, particularlygiven the fact that linguists, critics and others tend to classify Arabicletters based on their hierarchical semantic relationships to existingentities into the three categories of: (1) letters of meaning (ûr‰fma¢nawiyah), (2) phonetic letters (ûr‰f laf·iyyah), and (3) scribal letters (ûr‰f kha~~iyyah).

Al-Taw^ÏdÏ interprets the cognitive and communicational evolu-tion of Arabic script and its role as image based on what he terms‘movement’ (ârakah). He states, “when letters are formed via themovements of the calligrapher’s hand, they produce a calligraphic


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image consisting of letters with a visible and stable ‘identity’ thanks totheir being identified with a particular style (Naskh, Kufic, etc.).”

Given the foregoing, the ‘calligraphic image’ is a drawing, form oreffect which signifies a material entity perceptible to the eye, or whatsome Arab Muslim philosophers describe as the ‘bodily’1 aspect ofwriting (kit¥bah). This image is what some historians of the art ofArabic calligraphy term “the true nature, or soul, of Arabic script.”

The Communicative Theory of the Art of Arabic Calligraphy

The cognitive approach that the Islamic culture of communication hasadopted toward calligraphy is illustrated in the following statements:

(a) ‘The best script is script that can be read to derive meaning, andthe rest is naqsh.’ The word naqsh refers to script that has beenbeautified, embellished, artistically varied, colored, shaped, andthe like. Such techniques make up what is known as ‘calligraphicdesign’ (al-ta|mÏm al-kha~~Ï), which might imbue the calligraphicimage with additional meanings or significations that arise out ofan understanding of script as ‘an image with a spirit.’ Script is animage, and its spirit is its ability to communicate and clarify.

(b) ‘Script is a sign. Hence, the clearer it is, the more beautiful it is,’since in the realm of communication, ‘the most beautiful script isthe clearest, and the clearest script is the most beautiful.’

(c) When script departs from the functional role it plays in the handsof scribes, editors, and the like and enters the realm of the artisticand aesthetic, its beauty derives from image and form. Hand-written script then becomes ‘an entity in motion even though it isstill.’ Script of this nature brings enjoyment even to a foreignerwho is unable to read it.


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1 A^mad ibn ¢AlÏ al-QalqashandÏ, ßub^ al-A¢sh¥ fÏ ßin¥¢at al-Insha, edited by¤usayn Shams al-DÏn, (Beirut: D¥r al-Kutub al-¢Ilmiyah, 1987), Part 3, p. 46.


The Islamic ¢Al¥mah: An Application

[one]: concept and term

The word ¢al¥mah is being used here to refer to the emblem, seal andofficial stamp of the Islamic state. The use of the ¢al¥mah is a long-standing tradition of Muslim caliphs, rulers and states.

The primary motto of Islam has always been “there is no deity but Allah, and Muhammad is His messenger” (l¥ il¥ha ill¥ All¥h waMu^ammadun ras‰lu All¥h). It is the fundamental creedal statement towhich people have testified, which they have affirmed in their hearts,which has been lifted high on many a banner, and which has appearedon the coins of successive Islamic governments. However, the firstIslamic emblem understood in the artistic and communicative sensewas the noble prophetic seal.

Biographies of the Prophet and works recounting his praiseworthydeeds and qualities describe this seal’s artistic details, the most promi-nent of which are as follows: (1) It was made of silver and bore theinscription, “Muhammad, Messenger of Allah,” with ‘Muhammad’on one line, ‘Messenger’ on a second line, and ‘Allah’ on a third linesuch that it was read from bottom to top (that is with Allah’s name ontop). (2) The prophetic seal was kept by the first three rightly guidedcaliphs, Ab‰ Bakr, ¢Umar Ibn al-Kha~~¥b, and ¢Uthm¥n Ibn ¢Aff¥n,who kept it with them as a token of blessing rather than for practicalreasons relating to their caliphal duties, since each of them had a special seal of his own. Ab‰ Bakr’s seal bore the inscription, ni¢ma al-Q¥dir All¥h (“The All Powerful, The All Capable”), ¢Umar’s seal borethe words, kaf¥ bil-mawti w¥¢i·an y¥ ¢Umar (“Death is a sufficientwarner, O ¢Umar”), and ¢Uthm¥n’s bore the inscription, la ta|burannaaw la tandumanna (“Patiently endure, or hang your head in shame”).As for the fourth caliph, ¢AlÏ ibn AbÏ >¥lib, his seal read, al-mulku lill¥hal-W¥^id al-Qahh¥r (“Sovereignty belongs to God, The One, TheConqueror, The Prevailer”).

During the reign of Umayyad Caliph Mu¢¥wiyah ibn AbÏ Sufy¥n,the caliphal seal came to have a special administrative institutionknown as DÏw¥n al-Kh¥tim, that is, the Bureau of the Signet Ring. It


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may have been this pioneering step that established the traditions ofthe emblem, the seal, the stamp, and the signature in the Islamic cultureof communication. Interest in such traditions did not stop with caliphs,monarchs, sultans, emirs, governors, judges and other state officials,but extended to Islamic society as a whole, as religious scholars, scien-tists, mystics, merchants and manufacturers also took to the use ofseals in their respective professions. The signet rings used by some indi-viduals had special phrases inscribed on them, while others bore the‘signatures’ of prominent teachers, writers, littérateurs, calligraphers,and other leading figures as an artistic badge of sorts.

[two]: the communicative design of the islamic emblem

The broad interest taken in the Islamic emblem on both official andpopular levels played a major role in the evolution it underwent withrespect to content, form, the material from which it was made, thenames applied to it, the meanings it conveyed, etc. Its structure wasbased on two primary elements: (1) the textual element, which takesthe form of verbal expression, meaning and signification, and (2) thevisual element, which manifests itself as shape, image, sign and discourse.

It is difficult to separate the textual and visual elements of the designand artistic formation of the Islamic emblem, since in general, such anemblem is a calligraphic representation of a written or spoken text.The text is the basis of the image in all communicative discourse.

Hence, they exist in an intimate organic unity of structure, and offunctional and semantic variety. Based on these two components – thetextual and the visual – Islamic emblems can be divided into three cate-gories: (1) those whose structure and communicative function arebased equally on the textual and the visual, as is the case with theprophetic seal, (2) those whose structure and communicative functionrely more on the textual element than on the visual element, as is thecase with the seals of the rightly guided, Umayyad, and Abbasidcaliphs, sultans, and others (historical sources contain no descriptionsof the forms or shapes taken by these seals, whereas the texts inscribedon them elucidated their owners’ religious and political visions), and


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(3) those whose structure and commu-nicative function rely more on thevisual element than on the textual ele-ment. The clearest and most familiarexamples of this type of emblem iswhat has come to be known as thetughra (al-~ughr¥’), that is, the officialstamp used by sultans, particularlythose of the Mamluk and Seljuq eras,and ending with the Ottoman state.

[three]: communication as textual and visual – the difficulty

Academic approaches to the tughra have tended to focus on the histori-cal and political dimensions of relevance to the Islamic state ratherthan on its communicative dimension, which can be studied semioti-cally. The semiotic approach looks at the emblem with a view tointerpreting its linguistic, cultural, and artistic aspects within theIslamic culture of communication on the written, spoken, textual andvisual levels. Historical, linguistic and literary sources contain anabundance of Islamic emblems in which the textual element is promi-nent. However, these same sources place sufficient emphasis on thevisual element to give calligraphic drawing a dual (textual-visual) iden-tity, as it were. On one hand we have the geometric shapes and poeticrhythms manifested in the art of Arabic calligraphy, and on the otherhand, we have the language itself. Given their textual-visual duality,the calligraphic elements of Islamic emblems have never faced therecurring question of identity that have been posed traditionally byresearchers, historians, critics, artists and calligraphers concerning thetughra, for example. The question is: Is the tughra simply an inscru-table text, or does it convey some enduring wisdom? Is it a symbol ofpower and authority? Do its structures reflect a lack of freedom toengage in visual creativity due to Islamic sensitivities relating to thepractices of drawing and visual representation? Or is it open to a widerange of interpretations even if the viewer is unable to decipher thetughra’s text and its calligraphic image?


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An example of a tughra


Questions such as these arise from the fact that scholars have beenmore preoccupied with the geometric shapes found in this Islamicemblem than they have been with its content, which consists of namesof Ottoman sultans. These sultans are sometimes difficult to distin-guish from one another, with changes in sultans’ names resulting intextual differences from one tughra to the next. As we have noted, theword tughra refers to an Ottoman sultan’s signet ring or seal signifyingroyalty and sovereignty. Every Ottoman sultan had his own tughra,and some were known to have had more than one.

Many researchers, critics, artists, calligraphers, and others havefaced the question of how to classify the tughra. Overall, scholars’ viewof the tughra has shifted from an emphasis on its direct function in thespheres of politics, law, and documentation, to its artistic and calligra-phic features, which may not lend themselves to scientific, academic ortechnical definition from a purely historical perspective. The tughrahas been classified sometimes as merely a calligraphic depiction, and atother times as an art form employing geometric shapes whose messagewas communicated through the relationship between the textual andthe visual. Nevertheless, scholars have never agreed on what, precisely,the communicative nature of the tughra is.

A number of scholars view the tughra as a type of Arabic calligraphyunique to the Ottomans in which they adapted some types of script,taking liberties with the recognized rules of the script when formingwhat are known as ‘calligraphic structures.’ Some scholars view thetughra as simply an ornamental style of Arabic calligraphy, which maymake it more of a ‘performing art’ than an art form per se. Others,however, have viewed the tughra as nothing but an image, and its writ-ing simply as a form of drawing; in fact, such scholars look upon everyform of writing-related or letter-related drawing as a type of tughra.

In contrast to these disparate views of the visual aspect of thetughra, some critics have proposed the more neutral view that thetughra is a distinctive Ottoman art form that falls somewhere betweenwriting and drawing. According to these latter critics, the tughra mightbe described as writing-based drawing that derives its form fromimages of certain mythical or symbolic birds found in the cultures ofIslamic peoples such as the Arabs (the griffon or the roc, for example),


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the Turks (the saad bird), and the Persians (the simurgh). This view isgiven credence by the fact that, in the view of some students of thetughra, this emblem went beyond being simply a monogram symboliz-ing royal power and authority to enter the worlds of abstract form socharacteristic of Islamic art.

[four]: the tughra’s communicative design

Certain historical references and archaeological remains indicate thephases through which the shapes and images used in the tughra passedin their evolution over time. One reference describes the Seljuq tughraas being in the shape of a bow, the bow shape having been an oldTurkish tribal emblem. Apparently an outgrowth of a writing move-ment whose purpose was to provide the signature for Seljuq SultanTughril Beg (d. 455 ah/1063 ce), one particular signet emblem borethe simple shape of the Arabic letter y¥’ as it appears at the end of aword (� ).

However, the clearest of the historical references and shapes relat-ing to the tughra come from what is known as ‘writers’ literature’(adab al-kutt¥b), a literary genre specifically concerned with news ofthe Bureau of Correspondence, Edicts, Signatures and their Replicas inIslamic states. Such references show the Mamluk tughra in the shape ofa square or rectangle consisting of the upright letters of the signatorytext, and which later took the shape of the Ottoman tughra.

Some modern critics and students of Islamic art view the tughra as“an elliptical figure” and nothing more. In fact, this image or form mayhave constituted the primary creative element of communicationdesign in Islamic art, whether as drawing or as script. As such, it wasthe focal point of the artistic ‘game’ that was being played by a commu-nity of painters and calligraphers to whom we might refer as the ‘tughraartists.’ A prominent representative of this group was Mu|~af¥ R¥qim(d. 1234 ah/1826 ce), who is thought to have brought the Ottomantughra to its final form.


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…


As illustrated in the figure above, the tughra consisted of a set ofspecific visual elements. We have the tuğs (meaning ‘flagstaffs’ in theTurkish language), represented by the three vertical lines emergingfrom the top of the tughra and signifying independence. The inner andouter loops (beyze) on the left side of the tughra have been said to sym-bolize the two seas over which the Ottoman Sultan was believed tohold sway: the larger, outer loop being the Mediterranean Sea, and thesmaller inner loop representing the Black Sea. As for the sail-like S-shaped lines that intersect with the tuğs, referred to as zülfe, theysignify by their angle that the winds blow from the east (right) to thewest (left), the traditional movement of the Ottomans. The linesextending outward toward the right of the tughra are calledhançer andsignify a sword, symbol of power and might. The qawl was the state-ment found at the center of the tughra. At the bottom of the tughra thename of the sultan was written out; this element was referred to as thesere. And at the bottom left one found the signature of the calligrapherwho had drawn the tughra’s design.

When the tughra entered the realm of abstract form with its subtleinterpretive shifts, these artists found broad vistas of communicativedesign and creative potential opening up before them. The overallartistic structure of their work now came to rely clearly on the shape ofthe tughra as a highly symbolic visual phenomenon. Given these newlyopened horizons, some scholars of Islamic art came to describe the artof tughra forms with as many adjectives as there were texts, functionsand communicative aims.


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The layoutof the tughra


[five]: the modernity of the calligraphic image

The formal nature of the tughra has prompted modern art critics toview its visual element as a sublime melange of geometry, beauty, andcreativity. Consequently, the textual element has not been seen asemerging directly from the specific words, names or titles used. Rather,it is seen as emerging from the tughra’s stunning visual element. Hence,the overall discourse of the tughra (consisting of the textual and thevisual together) is transformed into a kind of metadiscourse that possesses an ever-renewing capacity for creative interpretations andreadings. The calligraphic images employed in the tughra are burstingwith new meanings via what art critic Shakir Hasan Al Said refers to as“the single dimension,” by which he means that the shape or form ofthe letter itself takes on artistic or aesthetic value without necessarilycommunicating a given meaning.

This idea served as the basis for the ‘letter movement’ in modernArab fine art. The Arab calligraphers’ statement released by the FirstConvention of Arab Plastic Artists held in Baghdad in April, 1973read: “Things have evolved in such a way that the Arab calligraphernow works to strike a balance between adherence to rules relating tothe script itself and the art of ornamentation. We can use a letter as anornament devoid of content. Similarly, we can use it as a means of writ-ing in numerous fields. In this sense, calligraphy has become a form ofacademic-artistic inquiry.”

The tughra emblem has been employed in symbolic ways in numer-ous works of art and literature, particularly those relating to Sufism.The effects of the tughra on modern calligraphic art forms can be seen,for example, in the extension and overlap of letters, or in the shading ofcertain regions of the script. Hence, when we see a beautiful paintingconsisting of letters of the Arabic alphabet, it serves as a reminder ofwhat was achieved by the Islamic culture of communication in interac-tion with other peoples and cultures in times of old and, in moderntimes, through the discourse of art, personal experience, and non-verbal readings of the images of Arabic script.


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orientalist research into Islamic art overall, and aesthetic theory in particular, has left a clear impact on modern andcontemporary Arab-Islamic culture. It has, for example, generatedgreater interest in the historical and civilizational background ofIslamic art and attempts to study it from both philosophical and func-tional perspectives. As a result, the theory of Islamic art has come to beclosely associated with the modern Western approach to aesthetics andthe philosophy of art.

In fact, it might be said that the theory of Islamic art is largely anoutcome of Orientalist research and knowledge in this field. NumerousWestern historians of Islamic art have even gone so far as to claim thatthe Islamic intellectual tradition contains no theory of art or, at thevery least, that the Islamic concept of aesthetics and philosophy of arthave been marked by a degree of incoherence. Rarely do we find anycommendation of the Islamic tradition in modern aesthetic studies;indeed, rarely do we find any suggestion that an Islamic aesthetic everexisted.

In response to denigrating Orientalist attitudes toward the Islamictradition as it relates to the aesthetic, a number of contemporaryMuslim scholars set out to demonstrate the existence of an authenticIslamic aesthetic that could provide the needed foundation for a theoryof Islamic art. Such scholars began tracing out the features of this aes-thetic based on material drawn from the Arab-Islamic intellectual andphilosophical tradition, including relevant texts from the Qur’an andthe Prophetic Hadith, and from the fields of linguistics, literature andhistory. By examining the aesthetic and artistic elements of the Islamictradition from a non-Orientalist perspective, these Muslim thinkers

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Conclusion

Grounding the Theory of Islamic Art: Vision and Method


strove to root the theory of Islamic art in a broadly based Islamic aesthetic.

Philosophical aesthetics tends to focus exclusively on what might betermed ‘artistic beauty’ as manifested in architecture, paintings, draw-ings, and comparable expressions of human creativity. Islamic aesthet-ics by contrast defines beauty broadly as a quality that can be perceivedanywhere in the universe: in nature, human beings, behavior, creativity,and images. Islamic aesthetics has thus been defined as a branch of thehumanities that concerns itself with the study of beauty both as con-cept and as personal experience.

More broadly speaking, Aesthetics is a discipline that concernsitself with the meaning of beauty, which includes an identification ofbeauty as a concept, its criteria, and its purposes. Beauty is viewed as agenuine, essential element of an individual entity and its reason forexisting.

In its general sense, Aesthetics is the study of beauty in things in theabsolute sense of ‘thing’: be it material or spiritual, natural or manu-factured, traditional or innovative, literary or artistic. There is, inaddition, an aesthetic that is particular to each individual thing, whichmeans that there are as many aesthetics as there are existent entities,particularly in the realms of art and literature.

In the field of modern literary criticism, the term ‘aesthetics’ hasbeen used to indicate that beauty is the primary feature that gives a textits value. Hence, in the absence of beauty, no artistic significanceattaches to any text, since a literary text’s primary function is to bebeautiful.

The term ‘Islamic aesthetics’ has sometimes been perceived as problematic due to the fact that it is used to refer to the study of both literature and art, not to mention the breadth of the concept of ‘aesthet-ics’ itself with its varied manifestations on the levels of both theory andapplication. Matters are further complicated by the use of the adjective‘Islamic’ to modify a term that appears to refer to a fundamentallyWestern cultural category, and which appeared relatively late even inrelation to Western culture itself. This difficulty continues to plagueattempts by Arab-Muslim thinkers to draw a distinction among vari-ous realms of Islamic aesthetics, be they literary, artistic, or otherwise,


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especially given the fact that attempts to root aesthetics in the Islamicintellectual tradition appear, for the most part, to be more orientedtoward literary aesthetics than they are toward artistic aesthetics.

Despite the complementarity that exists among the Islamic aestheticterms applicable to the artistic and literary fields, it is important toidentify Islamic-Arabic texts that embody the philosophical, artisticand critical theories on which we can build an Islamic, literary-artisticaesthetic vision that is independent of the Western aesthetic perspec-tive. Those involved in such efforts need to construct a precise conceptof aesthetics that is suited specifically to the theory of Islamic art, andthat is, at the same time, set within the overall framework of aestheticsas a philosophical and critical field applicable to human experience inall times and places. Islamic aesthetics applies to a specific epistemo-logical, social, cultural and religious milieu with its distinctivetheoretical and practical aspects.

Vision, subject matter, concepts, terminology and method are theprinciple focal points of any process of grounding the theory of Islamicart, or ‘Islamic aesthetic,’ in its own indigenous tradition. The phrase‘Islamic aesthetic’ is used in the study of the various art forms that haveemerged out of Islamic civilization as phenomena rooted in time andplace.

The process of grounding the theory of Islamic art in its home heritage needs to be carried out within distinctly Islamic academic andscientific structures, and with a thorough knowledge of Islamic historyand civilization. In addition to generating its own particular artisticapplications, such a process should promote greater attentiveness tothe creative laws and principles that undergird the framework ofIslamic philosophical and cultural awareness.


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The Theory of

Islamic Arterutcurts cimetsipe dna tpecnoc citehtsea

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divine oneness as the principle of beauty is perhaps quintessentially Islamic artistic expression and experience and what it celebrates. Why has Islamic artevolved as it has, what forms does it take, what is the logic underlying it? Whatmessage is the Muslim artist attempting to convey, what emotion is he seekingto evoke? This work views Islamic art as a subject of archeological study andtreats its evolution as part of the historical study of art in the broader sense. Atthe same time, it paves the way for an epistemological shift from viewingIslamic art as a material concept having to do with beautiful rarities and relicsthat have grown out of Islamic cultural and artistic creativity, to a theoreticalconcept associated with a vision, a principle, a theory and a method. This theo-retical concept provides the intellectual and cultural foundation for a criticalphilosophical science of Islamic artistic beauty to which we might refer as ‘thescience of Islamic art,’ or ‘the Islamic aesthetic’ that evaluates visual artistic creations in terms of both beauty and practical usefulness. In the process thestudy also explores orientalist misconceptions, challenging some of the premiseswith which it has approached Islamic art, with judgement rooted in a culturalframework alien to the spiritual perspective of Islam.

Professor Idham Mohammed Hanash has a PhD (1999) from the Institute of History andScientific Arabic Heritage of Higher Studies, and is currently an instructor in Islamic arts, andhead of the Academic Department of the College of Islamic Arts and Architecture at theInternational Islamic Sciences University in Jordan. He is interested in Arabic calligraphy and itsartistic and critical issues, and has authored more than 10books and many studies in this field.

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